waiting for the wormhole. prescient clocks. find the end. the void becomes her. nowhere to go. except deeper into the drug. swimming in paths. drowning in places. Her monsters quiet. As she constructs their cages.

Her flesh loud with a parliament of despots and slaves. the turgid democracy of touch. so sharp with the brevity of when. so tender with the urgency of if.

Paper cuts.

Shallow wounds. Deep below the surface.

the wormhole closes. swallows. her panic becomes her. she welcomes the flood. the simple math of surrender. groping darkness. the whispering grey that surrounds it. unwilling to listen.

strangers in her skin. digging their way out.

cowards and pigs. so alike. heavy machines. delicate operations. the low moon measures her grip. knowing she holds nothing. the staircase turns on its side. a marathon of choices. like dull razors fucking worn cunts.

violence like poetry. scratches. scrapes its way across her skin. the arithmetic of hunger much more colorful than she thought. fractions of knowing. what you had. decimals closer to what you want.

the fray of monsters. sharp claws. useless in this soft grass. the choke of the wind as it teases the glass. Desperate for a grain of sand. to give it presence. Something they can see. Know it is real.

Too many windows. seldom places. she hurries. Urged by the silence. The sweep of surrender. Quietly narrates.

empty pages. broken bindings.

Gentle parasites. Lap up the bones. Puddles of when we still mattered to anyone other than ourselves. Long ropes with small knots at each end. Pretending to know the distance between the person and the skeleton. Time is acute. As sharp an angle as there is. Flesh is obtuse. Wide open and hungry to be fed. An ugly pattern. A series of numbers. Each one elaborating on the last. A sequence. A manic progression. The physics of truth more knots than strings.

The ladder perched just beneath the glass. Open windows ripe with rapunzels unwilling to let down their hair. The vortex. Howling with if. The studio of skin awash in a sea of contrition. Every color too much. Every pencil broken.

She could wear the flames just as she would any crown. Like a preacher low in the pulpit. Willing to burn to save the flock. She could scream. Like no one is listening. Fury as precise as any algorithm. That it's lonely trying to be what they want.

patterns. the arithmetic of change. steep hills. bloated with journeys that have all been taken. the quiet of her lion possesses the dark. a weightless roar halting with loss. Her colors all stickpins. In roads too grey. The journey stolen from her.

The pivot of the fulcrum. every star slightly closer. the choke of the world. in colored pencils and torn pages. the walls all glass. the rub of strangers. animals. bargaining with the shame.

Gasping under the moon. Suffocating in the fist of god.

Liars and saints. Bartering with the illusion of power. the fantasy of omniscience. The parity of religion. Curs and strays and victims. Flowers and dew and exhaust. As we hunt. Filthy roads pressed too close. Distance measured in faces.

They all betray this flesh. The one thing that makes us real. Burnt tinder, her eyes, her skin, her want. The ribald manifesto of physics. We are animals. Manic and secreting. Foul and crippled with want. Patterns in the numbers. Pretending stories. Pressing hard on the glass. As if there might be a lesson in all this falling.

the grey. ambivalent tornadoes. notches. patterns in her resolve.

the tunnel. guessing games. knots in the string between choices.

the loop. open sores. flaunt their pus.

the friction. tender scabs. clouds rub hard against the sun. because the light is false. only the darkness can be trusted.

her stage is soft. long tests with no wrong answers. just more questions.

her puppets are loud. the roar of concession. soft footprints braid the grass. Chasing monster they've never found.

If the map is true, then you are here. And I am content drowning in the wolf's mouth.

Frail splints name the confession. Heavy tourniquets reason with the wound. Nothing is this small. Nothing is this big.

The world arrives in fractions. Small holes in her panties. Minor integers usurped by the din of now.

Numbers. Collisions of when. The world was small and distant. A thin shadow on the atmosphere. Fortified by an eclipse.

The blue. Blunt diamonds in a minefield. A molecular war. Ripe with perpetuity of pleasure. Teeth on the ink. Faces in the monsters. Paper people piss on the forest. The witch is dead, but our breadcrumbs still wait for someone to follow them.

The science of skin is well documented. Rain in the morning. Steeps the lust.

Thunder in the afternoon. Shouts louder than the eipipahny of touch.

Drought in the evening. Teaches us to forget.

She runs on her hands and knees. Just one image clenched between her teeth. The Earth. A small stone. Lost in the cold brevity of a universe governed by science. Herself so much smaller yet.

She has yellows. Virulent tumors growing on the branches of her thoughts. The tilting tree. Pokes the clouds. Needs to be rained on again.

The dead of the world presses close. Eager hunters deferring to the whims of blood.

Counting. Out loud. Cocktails and similes. Fixated. Like the world is ending. Because it is.

Distance. In duct tape and whisky. The cautious lies of skin. Whisper their stories. Into the ears of the deaf. Auditors embracing the fleshy pulpit of touch. Paradise will never be so close as it is when you're waiting. For the rain to remember.

the dead shuffling their bones. Poker skeletons. Earnest monsters. Horns misplaced. The soft soil. Ripe with holes. The gentle arc of acceleration as it catches up with gravity.

Carriers. Like the sickness is enough. Just stones. Rocks hitting the window. In epiphanies of disease.

Born into illness. Bred into complacency.

A little girl. Gathering her twigs. Choking on her medicine.

when. she was. before. now. only. if. how. ciphers of skin. the thief. a seldom song. an anxious promise. the wold in candles. melting. or waiting. to be blown out.

her quiet wars getting louder.

decimals. numbers. faces. puppets. their strings all knotted. decision. blame. confession. a marathon of scissors. cutting the tethers that make us choose.

her breathless armies. her stalwart generals. her crimson soldiers. all consumed by the cause.

particles vibrating. microscopic tremors. that rock the world.

arteries. spoiled by their path. the center. hungry for rebels. anthems.

what. it was. then. will be. can. should. life in hurricanes and downpours. it's only tomorrow because we say it is. it's only yesterday because we want to forget.

dim lamps on the desk of eternity. books open. pencils sharp. the pages dense with empty.

monsters without their clothes. touch like breadcrumbs. distance like sirens. death is wonderful given the right drugs. the naked in her stare. the ovulation in her kiss. she bleeds. like her womb is perforated. she dances like the music is deaf.

lipstick on the rail. confessions of a dangerous addict. time in pleats and wrinkles. embraces the siren. Everything is stolen Everyone is a thief. borrowed skin scraping the bones that hunger beneath.

faces like waiting grenades. simple puzzles not to be solved. a fiction of choices. amongst a war of slaves. freedom has its conditions. servitude has its benefits.

the rope. knots in the continuum. places to be. checkerboards in the morality of men. paper cuts on the fist of time. barely slow it down.

the drug finds her. knows. who she is. stubbornly waits. for her to remember. who she was.

moments in time. each one a bucket full of holes. we waste our lives trying to fill.

manic blackboards. drunk with chalk. the end of the world is quiet. three footed rabbits in a race against the tortoise. simple pencil marks. dig the graves deep enough. silent clowns spoil the cirucs that was her heart.

soft moons orbit the planet. lost in her gravity. the char of her flesh. an eager. quiet song. unwilling to forget. the witches and the woodsmen. who led her into the forest.

paper emperors in their missing robes. these sheets aflame with brittle promises. naked kings tempt the throne. the clutch of darkness stubborn and wordless.

tracing gods on onion skin. sparse outlines too vast for ink. bleating lambs tempting the math. progress is decimals. purpose is random.

the ugly doll. limbs lost to the storm. swims in the void. eager to drown. an earnest parasite. suckling the bone. the wrinkled paper she takes for granted. the tiny scars that grow so big. a coyote. dwarfed by the mountains. A deer negotiating with the hunter. a tapestry of barbarians. masturbating on their clubs.

silver scrapes. and flesh is dense. in math. in life. in pleasure. hard angles defer to the parabola.

the distance absorbs the effort. Newton's cradle. Einstein's relative. the shy parachutes of broken wings. stooping to check for the existence of gravity.

Arrogant Earth. Naive sky. Decimals too close to death. Verbs belonging to strangers. The pattern. the growl of the beast. Hostile flowers and their thorny fists. Story more than enough. The leaden grope of the hour. Making art from the victims.

Pretty colors swallow the world.

Impossible mazes pretend to have an exit.

paper blades cut nearly as deep. crayon faces grin and laugh. her eyes are closed. her bed is empty. still she can see. she is not alone in her dissidence.

heavy apples weigh on the limbs. the gentle tug of gravity. weak, but effective. the temptation swells in her throat. and she is ready to fall again. always falling. flesh tethered to the wind. always laughing. because there is nothing else worth doing.

the martyrs in their heavy shrouds. name the dances. set the tempo. idle prophecies. shuffle the walls. between poets and madmen.

Arrogant demons with their polished horns. parachutes and tombstones steal her from the clouds. all that death close enough to want. Candy hearts still in their cellophane. As the sweetness forgets.

Gentle lies tell us. Fractions determine the whole. Fussing over the finer details of the void. The monkey thumps his bible while the mosquito stings the atom. Progress. Yellow and grey and unlikely. Fingers in the lava.

The knot undone.

Strategies confess.

Aggressive truths hunt. Impotent predators tempted by the frailty of flesh.

Beasts in their folding chairs. Barking at the sun. It only rains when I've forgotten my umbrella. Time is only arithmetic. The simplest of calculations. Like any number always divisible by one. Maybe something more. Or even a little less. Depending on how you approach it.

Every breath is a clock. Counting down. Every touch a volcano.

Her time machine choking on the science of when.

As powerful as she wishes. As weak as she can stand.

Small like an answer. Vast like a question.

Broken storms turn colors in her fist. It's the end of the world. Again and again. Swimming in fingers. Drowning in lips. A bridge of twelve dimenions. Divisible by only one. Colored paper craves white pencils. Snagged ribbon demands scissors.

the evolution of consent. conditions of when. undressed by time. raped by the moment. portions of universe small enough to envy. thunder. the existing storm. fingerprints on the glass insist we're getting closer.

the pain is colorful. A perpetual surrender. as beautiful as it is lonesome. the pain is ambitious.

trinkets and traitors. like the skin on water. Erupting with breath.

one number. a legion of skin. one stab. amongst a cacophony of blades. downpours of silent deaths. to drown out the living. the poet. the smooth glass that caresses the flower. the man. the quake of choices that causes it to crack.

the stories. the science. her heart dense with schrodinger's cat.

the pain makes it true. everything else is just static.

the distance. one lifetime. maybe two. the hunt erupting under her skin. the physics of when. our decisions consumed us. small monsters aiming their poison arrows. death is a luxury of the young.

an excuse i outgrew a long time ago.

Corners in her throat. Bend the words. Run. A marathon of suicides. Dirty glass. Open windows. Choking on the world.

Counting backward from zero. Indebted to the void. stalled time machines. the blunt cull of beauty. in stark contrast. to the gentle slope of addiction.

Her eyes the needle. Her lips the thread. Everywhere seams coming undone. emporers without their clothes.

living comes in doses. a foul medicine. ripe with the viscera of choices. not our own. meant to make us sicker. cradled in the poison. the world is fragile and intense.

skin betrays readily. and bones are not far behind. every breath a treason. her voice a scab. eager to abandon the wound.

the years. a broken machine. stiff with mechanics of strangers.

gravity easily recognizes her by the empty dress she used to wear.