testing the perimeter. All the light bulbs dark. she bickers with Faraday. About the continuity of time. It's not one piece of string full of knots. There are many. Joined by such scars.

The world is square to be sure. It's area easily determined by multiplying the lengths of the ends. The box is empty. The space is full. The difference negligible. Empty corners swallow the switches that isolate liar from fool. Time machines, by nature, are arrogant. They have to be. To do the things they do.

she sits on the arithmetic. One. Two. Three. Sublimating moments. Holding its empty syringe close to her vein. Ignoring the mass. And the velocity. Because physics lies. Especially when you're trying to estimate the weight of nothing.

There is an empty box. Its contents change to suit me. There is an empty box. And I want everything inside it.

through the clumsy strut of the clouds i could see the rain eager to fall. a deluge just beyond our world. constantly occuring. but never close enough to be real. the naked tortoise in bed with the hare. the race. long forgotten. skin like fables. more words than movement. want a weapon that always injures, but never kills. the dead in the shadows. favoring the silence. all those storms still refusing.

with paradise so close, she admitted the inherent flaws. of a utopia such as hers is. always wanting more. never having had enough. hardly a paradise at all. but lacking any apparent exit.

following the fireflies. their manic flights reminding her of casual sex. all arcs in the desolate sky. and ornate finials on shaky posts in her head. an hysterical gravity weighing down every step.

a rusty zipper in her throat. threatening to come undone. a song without music. A ladder waiting just outside of a window locked.

it never rains out there.

in here. it never stops.

I couldn't hear her, but I knew that she had said. The constant avalanche from small people pushing big boulders. The occasionally grace of the downward slope trying to warn them of the mountains ahead.

She took the darkness. for an ally. Where her secrets could be kept. Assuming the night had no intentions of ending. Reminiscing about a sun that thought better than to shine. Int the corners where she kept her array of faces. Each on designated to a particular conflict.

One for truth. Another for denial. all aware of the bloody hands she'd used to assembled them from her broken windows glass.

The war I thought I was winning turning so quickly to surrender. She finds comfort in the prison. Hope in the echo of the bars. A willing captive. as the war outside whispers.

I've always wondered. If an open door is enough. And why, it's never locked.

pouring her stories into the shallow holes she's dug. Overcoming the sharp. a cut at a time. Waiting for the mud to set on the path that's taken her here. The beginning and the end becoming one.

the water receding. leaving her buckets heavy. wet sand in close. The scowl of the desert distant, but coming closer.

Trying on the hours she wonders. How the minutes keep up. A tongue in strokes of fetid resolve. A hero searching for missing limbs. Time bending backward on itself. As if the two might might touch.

It's a portrait. A painting musty in an attic bare. Changing. Though no one notices.

She waits patiently. For the years to catch up. Dull teeth gnawing on the bones. That no longer fit into the puzzle of her skin.

This fallow sack of protein and ambivalence. Strutting through the needless cycles of taste and touch. As if the world was ever close enough.

A box. Burdened by when. A place corrupting the questions. A page torn from the device. Tremors of realization. She steps out from the chamber. With empty hands. And no one left to blame.

With this small world in her fist. This big one between her legs. And the gears of her time machine pretending to know the difference.

It was quiet. Like the lungs of a sleeping giant. It was dark. Far from the entrance. The obvious catastrophe. Of poison and panic. Pushing the moments away. As she laid. Breathing in the smoke. Of dead things on fire. And trapezoids losing their angles.

Small bird on the perch. Singing old songs. Muted by the expectation. The slant of the ladder. Bending her. And Threatening to break the strings. On limp puppets. An empty stage. A stalwart prefix. Eclipsing. The intrinsic doubt of humanity. As it sweeps through the pores right before she removes her face.

The plague. The expectation of overcoming the whims of our disease. Stutter through her bones in deafening drum beats. The road is empty. The world is silent. She cannot hear. She cannot see. The world choking at her hips. The water spilling. From the heavy buckets they bring. During these droughts.

A short trial. A brief audition with the pathogens of justice. The fever of blame exceeding. The range on her machine. The deaf throttle of the engine as it engages. Qualifying the blurring moments. A lion or a tiger she thinks. If I could only open my eyes and see.

An open window. The outside breezing in. A series of Little cataracts. a cumulative cancer. A leaky bucket. In which we carry these lives. A machine. A laborious engine. Requiring so much energy to get to where we've always been.

The future in soiled bandages. The infection persisting. Our rusty shovels sifting the sand. For stones big enough. Or other places where the water what thick enough. That these leaky buckets are enough.

Right the words. Connect the dots. Pictures resolve. To matchsticks and sparks. Am almost fire. That leaves her shivering. Massaging the fairy tale. Tempting the woodsman. She steals the ax from his hands.

Manipulating the witch. Sick of the candy. She reaches into the hot oven. Prepared to loose some skin.

There are monsters. To be sure. And there are princes. To wake us up. A stairway. Stuttering through the choke of our footsteps. An echo. As the feast wanes. The Epiphany of skin solving for touch.

She wakes him. Though he's barely slept. Little tugs on the cords begin to open the curtains. She asks him. If he remembers. What it was like to have heaven so close. And doesn't beliwve him when he tells her he doesn't know.

I spoil no gestures with such a fallow thing as words. The walls high enough to enjoy. As the bricks fall upon my feet. The thief a welcome distraction. From the glass between. The lies I tell myself and the one I let them think I believe.

The future is spilling from her genitals. The past is a long negotiation with her tits. There once was a machine. Fool enough. A person. so passive as to pilot it. Survey the path of dead stars. Chart the universe in calm fatigues.

Open boxes. Unlit matches. Failing for their heat. The bare octopus. Every arm reaching.

A breath. To blow out the pilot light. A flinch to turn up the gas.

A bit of plastic. That resemble the pieces.

The trigger in her lips. The bullet in her thighs. Each woman is a weapon. All men are target practice.

She was tweaking her time machine. Fiddling with the dials. As the dinosaurs roared in the distance. The past is a booby trap. The future a terrorist. Now. I search for this now that is so hard to find.

Her bra on the carpet. A loose deck of cards. Waiting to be shuffled. Dealt. A calm obsession with internal physics. A nervous clock in her chest. The dying battery hanging on to the second hand. As time pauses. To let her catch up.

Going back to her schematic. Adjusting the for shear and the ominous variables. The window tenses as her raindrops approach. Failing without somewhere to land.

The motor chokes on her compromise. Skin bleating from distant pastures. As she counts the sheep she has left.

The machine stutters and whirs into a fugue of purpose. Sending her nowhere. A wolf. Huffing and puffing. As the pigs sleep between their bricks.

I tried to seduce the demons, but they weren't at all tempted. I built the pyramid in her backyard and waited for it to fall.

Playing with the notches on old belts. Reasoning with time like hopscotch. A stone or two. A breath of chalk. To determine. How close we are.

Cheating the division. Saving fractions as she did. The world in a lazy flame. Too weak to awaken. The colors in the soil. As her heels scrape. The rut.

The playground. The creaking swing set. A thousand eyes fixed on the ground. As her monster comes into focus.

A pressure behind her vision. A dull ache in the tilt of her limbs. As she talks her legs through the process of climbing out of the cellar. Lurching for a distant light. A series of numbers. Eager to be multiplied.

Peering through the pinhole. Satisfied by the absence of light. Everything is small. And far away. Her blood a thunder. A helicopter rising in her veins. Her fist is made of rotting fruit. Her bones are quivering gelatin. As her face flirts with the knuckles of the moment's fist.

Years gone by she knew it true. That she had found herself later and would again. The candle small. The stairs fallen. But that cellar just where she had left it. Moist soil and stalled clocks painting the air in the ripe of mildew. And doors heavy with broken skin.

The knot in her brow tightening. As she tumbled the numbers in her hands. Flaunting her fists. The darkness thrilling on its hinges. Squeaking and squealing like an abandoned infant. Eager to be picked up.

She waited for the train. As the earth began to thunder. From far away she felt it approaching. A sudden eclipse. Blinking her life out of existence. Leaving only the skeleton in its place.

A lonely sheet of paper. An empty pen stabbing at it. A comfortable hysteria on the tips of her fingers. The rumble of soldiers. In a war within herself.

A series of bricks showing as she builds her walls. A scale conceding as she takes her clothes off. A fairy tale too real as she peels open her picnic basket.

The meal. A little wolf. A bit of witch. A sip of girl to wash it down. All missing parts. And hard candy. Loose belts. And torn skirts. Pausing to accuse absent villains.

Her hero. A thousand years before and after. Fading footprints in bloody sands. The numbers accusing. Eager notches in a heavy belt. Her thighs struggling against the weight. The knot in her brow coming undone. Fractions of long division. Tolling in her memory. Pictures painted by the numbers.

Moments Thrusting. Hard dicks into the soft lips of limp dolls. The horizon. disappearing. In a series of quiet thunderstorms.

What goes. Goes slowly to be sure. Tangled amongst the dreadlocks of the wind as it casually tosses its head. Cold fingers frantically pressing. All the world's broken buttons.

The smaller monsters more comfort than threat. The hours flourish. In a fury of dark and light. Snarl and growl. Hunger raping darkness. In a patient oblivion.

The shadows posture. In grave expectations. Moments spin. Choked by the gasoline of their engines. Stalled by heavy brakes.

The answer lay at her feet. The decision still a few miles coming. Choices. Clean skeletons. A maze of bones in search of an exit.

The numbers. A kind of artist. Defiling the silence. With promises of us.

Gravity like a lasso. Yanks me back to the ground. Where I discover your footprints.

Her round eyes flaunted their corners. As she blinked against the darkness. An empty pot. A hit of meat to her nostrils. And then panic. The world too hot to manage. The machine overused at best. She could go back. And she could not stay where she was. A hot lamb awaiting the shears. And eventual slaughter.

In small handwriting he confessed. The many weights inside his chest. Lifting her up. As high as he was able. Imagining a butterfly. Gently sneezing in his grip. He pondered whether such a tiny hiccup could come back to spoil his oppression.

No need for hurricanes. Or blizzards. Just a little push. From something small enough to notice. The blink of an angel's eyes. Or the scent of a demon's breath.

She grew old as he tried to love her. Forgetting it more, the marathon, as each mile collapsed. Into a sinewy fret of cardboard and nightmare. That only possesed meaning to the back of her eyelids.

Searching for the stairs. The steps evolving as she struggled. Fighting with the hills at every turn. Assuming mountains where only valleys waited for the next of her steps.

Palling on her laurels. Stubborn with the cadence. Of those faulty machines that had given her this second glance. Gathering her house of straw. In the shadow of the wolf.

I always imagine her small. She sells herself that way. In cut off thoughts and broken epiphanies. That truncate her presence. Her moments are grave and hot. Ripe with hysterics. Yet not quite real. As she stumbles over the moments of grace.

I remember her tiny. A distant pinhole of light at the far end of long dark sleep. Always moving away.

The moon through a rear windshield. As where we've been gradually dissipates. Bubbles fading in a glass of champagne. The chasing ghosts absent from the musty attics in which we snuck out our games. It's always small. No matter how great the distance. The moon is always behind. The attic always ahead. Those rickety stairs all that unites us in our unreal escape. Some blind destination. On an journey just as sightless.

He was stubborn and cavalier and quick to soften. He spoke in the dialogue of an engineer. though he was anything but. Flirting with the math in indiscriminate liaisons. Seducing its whores with a payment of another sort. Blocking his life as a tower builds the child. Up and out. Until unsteady is all that is left.

The collapse is a relief. As the bed creaks with the muddied dreams of accepting strangers. Echoing stairwells heave with the whelp of slaves.

He waits for wolf in his tattered nightgown. She pauses to hear the moan of the moon as it carves through the belly of the heavens. Their deafness not yet within their grasp. They move their lips to speak. Yet no words are shared.

They search the levels. Trusting the breadcrumbs time has left. Prowling the moist grass for things more dead. Following the road. Home an oblique derivative of broken skin.

Tugging on the curtain. Trying to remember. That behind it there is only just an ordinary man.

Weighted bridges thrust the rapids too close. The sun gazes in earnest. At our melting toes. It was within reach once. That switch that activates the lamp with the dead bulb in it. I didn't want to posses the light. Just to prove that it exists.

True black is impossible to illuminate. These eyes fare better in darkness. The callous glint of wattage proves only that we are still sleeping. Enrapt by the pitch of stone nightmares we are desperate enough to perceive as dreams.

Weak bridges sway under the pace of ample demons. They pity us. Diligent little ants lost to the throes of the colony. Hate the devil if you must, but he gives me hope. That there is still something worth stealing from our souls.

Laugh. Like no one is listening. Because no one is.

These walls are thick. And inside them it is very quiet.

The numbers betrayed. Her fingers soiled with earnest masters. And the excrement of their slaves. Drawing her dungeons in four dimensions. Confident they cannot follow. As she bends the screws of time under her hammer.

She measures the structure. Flesh and bone in a precarious balance. A fortress of skin bound to come undone. A king abandoned by his subjects. A king just the same, but no longer a title worth possessing.

The maze of her lips a suitable war. That any soldier would gladly die helping to win. The sigh of her breasts as she breathes. An ample reward.

She waits for the darkness and then at last her plan unfurls. All those dead things deader than usual. All those slave with swords at their masters throats.

Free once, or so she pretends to recall. Freedom she has found a notorious ally. All poker chips and men too eager. To wager it all. Freedom. She pauses to imagine it. An awkward sigh rumbling from her chest. A thin layer of gauze between this wound and the next.

The magician.

His broken wand taunting him.

The bulk of the heat settled into her shoulder blades. As she drew her arms up tight into head. Pretending for a moment that with such an action she could make herself disappear.

Her thoughts lurking at the edge of the room. Staunch shadows tolling in mute booms. Unseen earthquakes shattering her hidden windows. The colors creeping in. Strands of pleasure reaching out to strangle her. Venomless snakes working hard to seduce the rodents into their mouths.

She paused at the door to inspect the latch on the vessel they called time. A mountain of metal to confine an engorged dark mass. A tickle in her throat to bring the disease back to life.

She weighed his eyes. His face. His testicles. She counted it all. As if there was a number at which she hoped to arrive.

And then she entereed the chamber. Not even imaging where she could go. Just pressing buttons and thinking she was close.

The choke of the world stiffening her lungs. The locks on those doors coming undone. As she hurried her picnic toward the wolf.

Some moments she surmised were just that. Made of straw. Meant to be. Blown down.

Scratching at the wart on her eyelid she saw things that were never there before. Genies ready with wishes to give. If only she could think of one worth wasting. Empty parking lots with stubborn old women circling for hours to locate the perfect spot.

As if the door could ever be close enough. Or her vision not betrayed. By this mountain of man too mammoth to climb, but willing to lift her up to the top.

A tornado of atoms fretting into the shadows on her lips as she she dared to take.

She could see. Just barely. Through the weight of calculations straining her brow. Frantically multiplying and dividing to determine what color of dress to wear. Incessantly checking the box. To see if the cat was still in it.

Was it alive. Was it dead. Or both. Only the poison in her experiment could guess. Her cheeks a candy house. Her ass a muddy trail. All leading to a dead witch with a wolf in her bed. And a child soon to lose her picnic.

It wasn't in the science that she went wrong she reasoned. Rather in the execution of the physics. Through the woods she thought. Isn't the best way to get there.

But it's the most interesting to be sure.