Kate hadn't always been alone. She simply chose to be now. Like the desert chooses sun over rain. Not to die, but to learn to live another way. She spent her days carving her thoughts in the skin of her forearm. Teasing the blood from its veins. In a form of art she casually referred to as zero gravity.

Making scars. indelible artworks she suspected would last. Longer than she. Riding escalators from groin to head. The dubious rituals of careless time travellers. Confronted with a future more past than expected.

Kate didn't keep a journal. She just always remembered. Places. People. Helplessness. Alone she concluded. Was the perfect place to confront them.

The spoiled emperors in their naked gowns. Flaunting their wealth. In polaroids of skin. She tried to ask. Playing the question against itself. When, she admitted, is negligible. Punctured tires. Pulling us down this path.

Pardons in the mortar. Solve for if. The edges of paper dolls dividing skin. I know the clock. And how well it fibs. Paper kites teasing the sun. As if the beginning belongs to us.

The moment comes. The options are chosen. Thsi legacy of flesh is uselesss. Now that these bones are all we are. The stubborn skeletons. Still pulling on. Their empty skins.

I knew. I was. I had been. The ulterior motive. Graves imply. I've scored the stone. And taken the soil. Meant to bury us.

Waiting for gods in thin cocoons. Double-crossing sneezing butterflies. Waiting for the storm.

This cracked shelll giving up the yolk.

The taper on the candle cautiously implied. The weight of the flame. She gathered her darkness. In rolls. In bits. Chunks of carrion. After the light had feasted.

She hurried the science. To explain. These seams in the fabric. Just needle and thread. Torn patches haplessly connected in knots and scabs. The villain scowling. The hero too perfect. The story told far too many times.

Her lips like vinegar. As I choke on the sour taste of happiness. It's too much. I wanted the ache to last. Shatter the glass. That makes these monsters into men. Sell the sign posts. That I've encountered. On this dead path.

She warned me about forgetting. But I wanted it too much. She said it was choice I should fear. The hopscotch game of addicts. Throwing rocks at empty squares.

The numbers chaffing her thighs as she begins to count again.

Clenching the last threads she asks the needle to be patient. There are so many seams. When I look at the ground they're obvious. When I look at the sky I can see them if I stare. An array of empty wells. Their buckets clanking against the wind. As we are forced to dig deeper. For our most basic needs.

Discussing with the monkey the plausibility evolution might possess. She posed to him this question. Why would you become us. Of all the things there are to be, surely we are not the ideal.

Riding her flat tires. For miles at a turn. Lost in tedious discussions. About plastic limbs and the practicality of skin. As if I'd spent all the do overs contained in this rickety time machine.

And I had to choose. how brief the dream. How short the day which let us love each other.

It would surely last longer than we did.

The glass broke and the snow fell to the ground. Fragments of time everywhere. Small splinters of a life that had only imagined itself. She blamed the water. For washing it away. She blamed the glass for being so fragile as to break. She blamed everything except the person who had been so careless. As to let it slip away.

She spent her days organizing the earthquakes that had to be. Debating names for the end. Hopeful that it would come soon. Fearful of what it would entail.

She had lived so long counting the winters that would suddenly arrive from nothing. The snow always at her feet. The curvature of the world constantly looming. Time she had imagined was something that occurred of its own will. Amd she thought it selfish that it would forget her so often.

The sun she knew to be far away, but close enough. The winter she had always speculated would behave in the same way.

When the glass broke and the water washed away all snowflakes she knew she was mistaken.

The winter was over and she was lost without it.

Her jagged purgatories at last, admitting, the flaws in their heavens.

She could climb the stairs. She had been. Doing so for years. Taking away choices. And offering new ones. Adding sticks to the fire. And numbers to the whole. Making what was big small. And what was hard soft. Telling her stories with only an end to guide her. Everything before that coming after she had decided.

Examining the moments in all their many flaws. The fraying capes of weak magicians. As if the world is ours to manipulate. And all these lies could be true given the right circumstances.

Arranging the pillars. Footnotes in this absolute fury. Tethers of skin pulling us all at once. Toward a beginning we never had the opportunity to experience.

We fight with the numbers. Soft ladders following the cliffs. As the ground inches closer. She wonders at the weakness of gravity. How it so easily tricks us.

As they all fall down.

The islands we keep. Determining whether they will wait for us. The poisons that cure us. Pondering their next disease. Waiting for the island to recognize. These weak skins that would separate. The bones from the meat. The particles from the atom. A limping fire in her belly. As she tries on the future in fits of skin.

Barbarians and monkeys. Push that boulder up its mountain. Angry gods argue with stubborn men. Evolutions combing through this swamp of flesh. In manic pulses and broken pencils.

The world is waiting. The world is anxious. To find the lost. Title the demons. And finish the poems. In a rage of possible ends. The world is quiet. Humble. Determined. To prove. That there is something to be found in it.

That lost is. Near enough.

The ghosts are gone. There is nothing to want here. Except the end. Atoms in creaking steps. That lead up to barren attics. mildewed dolls still undressing.

Plastic fingers trying to to stop the hammer in her fist.

The right side of the wormhole is far to my left. Subjects in tater tots and bacon bits. Force the tunnel open. Random dialogue. Prowls the fraying ends. Of lions' manes. And broken tethers. Following the balls we've spun around this cement.

I'm drowning in atoms. Waiting for the bomb. Chasing the architect who would design such lopsided heavens.

She meets the lamb in secret. She confesses the wolf in random coughs. Minor ghosts patrol the graveyard only stones have kept.

Catching the hour pretending she warns it that everything is gone. Travelling time she realizes. Nothing changes. And everyone forgets.

A cold hierarchy of arrogant buttons that do nothing.

A relentless coup of skin. Taking everything away.

A world of machines. Lost in the wisdom of failing mechanics. An eye in her wounds. Managing the panic.

She drowned a little as she explored the bottom. Pennies and dragonflies left in the pool. As the sun helps itself into our skin again. Pushing out winter's various wrinkles. Our potential. Occurring in random intervals. All of life divisible by this one condition. Trusting the button.

She wore the well in determinants. Oblique experiments in the illusion of choice. The fundamental italics of touch determined. To prove her too optimistic. Though she was, anything, but.

These claws. And heavy hides. Protect the animals. As the jungle assumes them. The numbers flourish forward. In a calm procession. Of infected wounds.

Tired skin confesses to letting time win. Little skips of rope. And minor dungeons of when. Leave the empty slipper in the prince's hands.

I break the glass. I reassemble it. Still I can see no more clearly.

Come back to us the hour pleaded. Leave us. Her face demanded. Perhaps we were then. We might even be now. What I can remember is just this. We are lost and we do not wish to be found.

She has her monsters. Her vengeful pets. as it were. Heavy molecules that attach themselves to the vapor of her breath. Making every word dense. Every conversation a challenge. She has her heroes too. And they are useless. Feeble blades that cut through the darkness with a whimper and a piss. A meek construct of morality more sticks than stones upon this bundle of ash we call choices.

All these lights. Still I only see one. It is this blindness that is responsible for my sight. I know not what these buttons will do. Nor where they intend to put us. I see the waves as they twist and turn in a choke hold of decisions. Tomorrow a soft lump of clay hardening rapidly in this meaty kiln.

Waiting is foolish. Since it has already happened.

I grab those skeletons and dress them in new skins. Saddened to watch them die all over again.

No dead things she said. Not tonight. Chaos instead. Lightning bolts of skin and thunderstorms of fingers. Still machines. The throttle's shallow breaths. As the brakes fails us, but we come to a stop nonetheless.

Lost in the fiction of broken flesh. Limbs telling stories our organs could have not written. Found. Frivolous wars with the alternative.

Near enough to the sun to see its lungs expanding.

Steps at every corner. Doors dividing each of them. All these keys useless without the locks.

The neanderthal in my time machine laughing at me.

No dead things tonight. Just the living to blame. For the glass under her nails. And the empty elevators.

Numbers of the verge of sentience. Attempting to determine what organic life is worth.

The fingers of the dolls pointing. The elements of the cure fortifying this disease.

What happened is gone. My feeble cheats all undone. Our future evolves to accommodate our follies. But our past is still unchanged.

Begin with the end. Head backwards toward there. Assuming you have already decided. That the animals are dead. The prisons broken. And the outcome is such that we are here now. Examining it. Trying to decide. Whether it can be undone. Or needs to be. Dealing the words. Bit of game. Arrogant wagers. On a beginning worthy of our ends.

Speak to the empty spaces. Where the machines lay dormant. Defiant moons on the verge of gravity. Her weak tentacles lurching at the fallen stones. As our games continue. Unabated. Wet chalk outlines in the pouring rain. Soliciting science for a meaning in this frivolous skin.

Start at the end. Travel back from there. Determine what will happen. And be prepared to explain how it has.

Try on the stones. As you would all these fraying fabrics. The end. Was always the beginning.

Let this deafness determine. What there is left to hear.

She was reasoning with the vampire. Pounding on broken gears in the motor of the machines. Marking the ceiling in flecks of red. For the spiders to find. For the juxtaposition to speculate. On the difference between strangers and friends.

Nothing empty. To hate. Machines choking on their engines. While she tinkers with the stitches on her panties. The obvious instruction. The terminally relevant oversight. That I can feel by touch. That I can see with these eyes.

The staggered clouds that flank the sun. The envious sky as it looks down upon the sea. The limbs removed from this desiccated doll. Still grabbing at things they cannot reach.

In blood there is reason. In need there is justice.

Her time machine tries, but cannot prove it. But she knows the numbers. and all the monsters that would use them.

Years ago ply their magic upon our tombstones. The dead converse with the living. In cautious fables. Cut short by poor arithmetic. She multiplies. She divides. Until everything is different.

Stubborn weeds and dying grass. As she waits on the house to find her attic. Hidden places. Too dark to tell. Set her fingerprints in the clay.

The spaces between challenge the math. As she fiddles with the engine. Truth and memory. Providence and provision. Seeking their series. Combusting. Grinding. Against the edges of the world. These bits of skin their only lubrication.

Counting out loud. Correlating. The coils and contraptions touch will evolve. From the simplest transgressions. An elaborate hierarchy of moments we only had hoped would happen. a problem so simple it's not worth solving.

A different time. The same as this. When we were us.

Only now we're not.

What's out there? Nothing. Everything. What's across the sea? Familiar strangers and missing curtains. On the windows no one should see in. Her eyes turn sideways and she says there are places there. Where dinosaurs are not dead. And we don't yet have any reasons to resent.

The broken zippers that too often betrayed us. The empty pockets we played for full. The moon on its cavernous arc. As the night falls empty.

Wisdom comes in violent stabs. My lessons devour me. The monster is gentle. It's the victim that is aggressive. The devil arrives in tight pony tails and torn panties. The evil is quiet. Soothing. Everything else is loud. Obnoxious. Defeating.

Finally she convinces the cow to jump over the moon. Ecstatic that the dish still loves the spoon. They all confront an army of hours. Convinced the world has only just begun.

A paper machete lobotomy. Dense with glue and missing friends.

Colors unfold. In heavy guns that weigh down my tired soldiers. The bucket leaking as I depart from the well. Wondering how deep it goes.

Her lips like peanut brittle. Cutting sweetness gouging my tongue. Her breasts empty shells. My fresh blood filling them up.

Wait not on the sun she cautions. The sun never shines anymore. It only skulks behind a curtain of clouds. As this rain continues to fall.

Half finished songs that hum through my skin on the whims of sour milk and rotten chocolate. Nervous ants gathering their crumbs. Under the shadow of the giant foot.

Turn off the light she instructs. As the window dies and the sidewalks fall dead. When there is nothing left out there we are only alive inside ourselves.

Leaky buckets fighting infernos.

The hours come without warning. Whistling tea kettles. Slaves to the flame. The molecules drawn to each other. In a science only touch can explain. These years. Empty houses. In bloody slabs of beef. Rotting. Carcasses torn from lush fields of wheat. The hunger. The growl of neanderthal ancestors. An obsolete madness. Which drives us still.

Sifting our wicks through the oil. Drops of kerosene. Suffer the button. On falling elevators.

This world. Infested with people. Smothers out all other things. This virus. Humanity. Has no vaccine.

I cut her out of cardboard. Imagining something much more realistic. But she was jagged and lacking dimension. Impossible to discern from any other woman.

I gave up. Letting the rain fall on her. Watching as the threads came undone. She cried that she felt it. As the sun snarled away what was left.

I spit on the paper. Trying to extinguish the flame. Surprised when all the ink was gone.

Bruised apples in her basket. The only future she can trust.

Parallel forces. Weaving our lives in gnarled stitches and broken drums. Echoing cavities. In the belly of the monsters we've been told are harmless. Blackboards thick with dusty ghosts. As our lessons progress.

Evolution is a heavy mortgage for this flesh. We spend our lives collecting debts. On the misconception that they are investments. Shutting each door as if those rooms can be locked. Wiping the glass. As though the sun can breach it.

Parallels. Only minor changes. Straddling the chain of events. As I scour this wasteland for any indication. That life once existed. A tournament of skin. A battlefield of doubt. As I try on this rotting mask and look in the mirror.

Only to find myself there once again.

Parallels. The stubborn math of the desperate. Claiming constants where only variables exist.

The composite. In threads of when. These feeble positions empowered the empty chambers. Where all this time travel happens. Or doesn't. Depending on where you end up.

This body taken. As a convenient place to land. Given failing engines. And the vast expanse of space between us.

Our future in thinning strands of hair. As her fingers comb through my many deceptions. I have no eyes. I have no limbs. I am only a voice to speak with. And ears to hear by. I wrestle with the garden for a fruit that is without sin. I barter with the wind. For a place to rest.

Bones give. And skin accepted. The limitations of the small worlds to which we have committed. She explains the world to me in simple arithmetic. Keep dividing until there is no remainder.

All our choices tainted by the virulent whims of impotent victims.

Plagues. Loose nightgowns. Tipping the dominos. A calm cascade. In quiet revenge. While she waits for her skeleton to grow back. A cliff on the tip of her finger. Frantic for buttons to press.

Sirens and saddle sores. More than motivation. As she changes again. Shuffling the numbers. Tomorrow in hands of poker. The dealer glances over shoulder.

Graves caught in her smile. Wagering corpses. Against this trusted sequence of skin.

Her laughter loud. As if no one can hear her. Her tears quiet. Becase she knows everyone is listening.

Weak plagues gathering momentum. In moldy boxes and the things we would leave to be guarded by them. Peeling the rocks. Chewing on rubberbands. Catching up to the clock. As it notices. We are the only ones left.

Still waiting for the world to end.

The devil in her nightgown. Making progress.

Congenial monsters fiddling with the portal. She goes back. To claim the future. Tracing the reflections in pieces of broken mirror. She measures the ladder. In dominions rather than inches. As if there is purpose in this eternal charade. Where skins collide with an electric crackle, but no fire is generated.

Boasting wars on distant horizons. Gathering soldiers with fried shrimp and chocolate syrup. Her parachute opens. And she is amazed to fall gently to the ground.

The closed book chasing her. As she tries to explain to the future that it has already occured.

The waves displacing the sand. Liek so many lonely men. Obessed with rockets. And the cautious flames that allow them to imagine there is still heat.

Numbers. Pursuant to their equations. Hoarse barking dogs tied to stakes in the yard. The anguish of division is in that the parts are revealed as not equal to the sum. little witches in their crooked hats. Starting the fires in their ovens for the children to shove them in.

Curious ants sampling the crumbs left by the filthy men paradise contains. The colony dies. While those left have everything.

Words. Blunt knives fighting with the thick of her abdomen.

The numbers. Laboring under their co-efficients. Harmless and ineffectual. Telling stories as the doors admit they're only pretend.

The numbers flowing. In an elegant series. A swarm of voices to shatter the glass.

Three days later. We fed again. On the stale confessions of empty beds. I watched her. Work the formulas. Wrestling with ratios. Apathy to outrage. In tiny bones delicate enough to digest. She bit down. Swallowing my parenthesis.

Working the ghosts. The failed geometry of unlabelled boxes. As she explored shrinking attics. Massaging the meat. In charred remains. Letting the dead things tug on her hair.

Her dungeon. More salvation than prison. Her hours. All collisions. With the crumbling houses of pigs.

Days later. She's still waiting. For the wolf. Building her time machines with broken pencils.

Solitude spent her well. A thick wad of singles distributed amongst the saints and the whores. I wondered the difference as I examined them. Both sex for profit. Be it before or after the fact.

She wasted her time on crowns and dead kernels of corn. Dwelling in the hot oil to prove her point. Shrugging on the demons like loose fitting nightgowns. Suffering with the spoiled fruit. All these hours have specified.

Warring with the poisons. As though poisons are not everywhere. Negotiating with the Cancers for a limb to keep.

Pulling the covers over her head she assumes the dream is close enough to catch. Stale petals. Withering gardens. Scratched out maps determined to get me there.

All the sharks magnificently quiet as I sort through these mounds of flesh.

Strangers confusing the vaccine withe the cure.