Solving For X

static. transition. barren trees. bony fingers grabbing at the sky.

choices. temptation. old women. studying the blurry maps drawn in their heads.

i reason with the numbers. though they seldom reason with me. long distances expressed in fractions. a lifetime down to a decimal place.

fragments. division. the tinny flush of surrender as the drug finds her center. the angles within. so sharp. even the math is lost.

the hours. stray dogs. monarchs of skin. smelling the scars. gorging on the diseases.

rapid. profuse. feral. the time machine coughs. spitting us out into a world where we hardly belong. its engine foul with the madness of choice.

a paradise thick with the corpses of strangers. it breaks down. stranding us here.

in this dank garden. caught between who we were and who we are.