time dilates. as it's wont to do. all paper machines and folded roads. time dilates and the years blind us. too bright. too big. too close.

the past is a hunter. the future is prey.

this voice. this broken lens. focuses on the horizon. everything is a photograph. strangled moments desperate to breathe again.

this body. this stubborn glass. refuses the science. unwilling to shatter. all tangents and decimals against the impossible symmetry of how.

portions. skeptical flesh considers.

the constant paradox of if.

the random. paths stumble. choices knot. small stones emerege among a persistent avalanche.

the temptation resolves. as chronic as touch is. all paper staircases and plastic doors. her dress is long. a shadow free from the science of angles. the sun is capricious. a fickle child put to bed too early . unsweetened chocolate. a flat tire at high speed. a thief out of practice. an impossible mountain aching against gravity's cold consent.

she bites her tongue. tasting the stranger under her skin who's so effortlessly becoming her.

she lays her bets. as weak as they are. the risk is a requirement.

the dubious parodies of freedom. all fish hooks and worms. no reverse. the biology of when. much louder than her quiet confessions.

she bites her tongue. pausing for the taste of blood. but it isn't there. a pale bystander on the edge of her contempt.

no wounds. only vacant cuts. hollow and barren of blood. resolute ghosts too focused on their dwindling skins.

he wagered on several things. none of them her.

the shadows came. long fingers pointing. grabbing at the void. there was always light, but never enough of it.

the edge met the colors. in a controversy of skin. a dim epiphany of acceptance. full of lye and vinegar.

she paused at the intersection. though the right of way was hers. she looked in all directions. but there was nowhere to go.

time grunts. a complacent suicide of turbines and combustion.

her thoughts give way. a fragile staircase. leading to rooms she's only glimpsed. the cold arithmetic of expectation boasting its mass. and the eager velocity of skin. all too willing to become the accelerant.

the moment sways. a casual pendulum. promising every direction. committing to none.

we spend our youth imagining a soft world. devoid of the fevers that sicken us with both desire and grief.

when we are well again. when we are older. and all those corners have become hard. we find ourselves longing for the those ungrateful diseases.

it receives no name. it bears no mark. it only is as any memory must be. an empty plate. the remaining crumbs still a temptation.

the future came and went. in bad decisions. melted ice cream and stubborn walnuts. her voice was loose. it sagged under the weight of her words.

life tumbled in. a caucus of addicts and visionaries. creasing the paper. manipulating the moments.

sex found her. young and eager. all the subtle charisma of a box belching open.

the darkness overtook her. swimming creases. sudden lightning. everything gelatin.

she vibrated and hummed. a motor without wheels.

he heart skipped rope. her mind played dominoes.

angles. pieces. rules. she followed them all them like a treasure map.

still, eventually they all fell down.

no winners. just the empty board.

and the stains where we lingered longer than we should have.

severed strands manifest. circumstance as obstuse as the angle are.

the particles. the essense of when. time's hurtful chorus. repeating.

the cold is a beautiful entity. more human than any of us. a hungry child. a stern parent. a scab on the knee. a kiss on the lips.

the winter is a poet. more prolific than any man or woman. a millenia of verses. each one eclipsing the next.

i don't know what love is. i've only used words to imagine it.

i've glimpsed its colors. i've even heard its voice.

it's random. it's dots on dice.

it's the collateral of a sin. it's the debt are all born with.

it's the sweet of a bridge. the sour of distance.

they were everywhere and nowhere. they came. were taken. they never left. small faces and large ones. fragile like balloons. alone among each other.

the sleeping rabbit warned them. the punishment for rebellion. the stick. the fallen ears. eternity clamping shut.

strangers came and went. frankensteins and draculas. feasting on their innards. leaving behind the empty skins.

they'd run. they'd try to sometimes. some would almost escape.

the sleeping rabbit punished them. blunt discipline in a thunder of fists. dead faces limp on the stick. the rabbit. its fallen ears teasing the shadows from the corners of their dungeon.

they'd let them. they had to. until they were gone. lost inside themselves. plastic dolls still sick with blood and guts.

they'd run. they'd try to get away. but the sleeping rabbit always found them.

the precision overwhelms her. the science bullies. a consensus of pain. a machine of skin. hungrier than the source.

she bargains with the colors. she negotiates the want. a petition of beautiful girls manages her nausea.

she worships the obvious gods. convinced of their impotence.

the slope. an infinite disease. the climb. an impeccable consequence. small knots in the rope that gathers us from the bottom.

the terrible positions that bids us start. the awful finish that spoils our pause.

her temporary voice. like burnt rubber and poorly combusted gas. an elaborate bridge. only broken by an always hungry war.

she understands there are heroes. though she's unclear  how they differ from villains.

colors run in  the rain like perfect murders.

the world ends quietly. in whispers and asides. the skeleton discards the used flesh. Everything is currency. Even death. she chases the needle. as it flaunts the thread.

i don't tell stories. i am told by them.

suicides evolve. dismantling the structure of the act. both nectar and bee stings. brilliant and desperate. a lonely wolf chewing on a house of brick.

the hours are talkative. chattering with bones and semen. and empty bodies full of want.

the slender discipline of choices. the quiet chaos of decision.

touch's seldom assassins. boast their murders

i never ask. how far it is.

instead, i measure the distance by each step.

causality she begins to explain. is a tether. an independent gravity. all buttoned-up blazers and fraying panties. an obscene ratio that exists between suicide and happiness. the baroque anatomy of when.  colors on a wheel. all of them colliding until there is only grey.

circumstance becomes her. a pretty dress that doesn't quite fit. she dances in its folds. more than content with the gaps.

small steps. scrapes really. sore knees. as she navigates those empty paths. the sharp tears and deep creases in time's worn road maps.

relativity she says. it reacts as it must. this flame. this void. and all the ugly iterations therein.

they're just science sharpening its pencil. they're just chemistry answering all the wrong questions.

angles she screamed. like someone had been waiting . that there was a question. waiting patiently for an answer.

degrees. they are everything and nothing. a measure and a void. the rank therapy of poets and drunkards in the last throes of relevance.

she had already spent her youth on squat romantics and sputtering time machines. they had been both impressive and pathetic. a dull pendulum in her gut swinging mercilessly. to the rhythm of terrorists and thieves.

the pages scraped and moaned. prisoners in a war of flesh.

time coughed. sick with the premise of her. a fattening tick on its ripest vein.

the hours came. in an orgasm of pain. the years. like children skipping rope. monotony her only sanctuary.

a ribbon. on a gift. the knot at the center of  the bow. slowly coming undone.

the wind wept thoughtlessly. a shuddering bridge between apathy and rage. her silence a tombstone to mark the place where tomorrow had died.

how do we get there. how will we know. it's close.

sex is a beautiful allegory. a vivid history. of lives that often spark, but seldom ignite.

the scrape awakened. soft and diligent. pushing each minute into place. that impossible friction that mimicks the void.

it's a simple path riddled with many holes.

soil sorted. weights measured. the continuity of obsession. time is paper. life is creases.

her lazy dreams corrupt her. her spoiled ambitions betray. her voice is sober. her future is glass.  her words are stones.

frost scrapes like scabs from the windows. the blood is forgotten. the wound is not. the cold comes in doses. an impotent medicine for a glorious disease. the bleak astronomy of flesh in foul puddles and empty needles.

a dismal rapture. a furious discontent.

a perversion of intimacy more predator than prey.

the gray creases in her voice. the soft perforations in her consent. choices more marathon than sprint.

the anatomy of when. all lightning bolts and teddy bears. whispering their bones. fragments of time. descontructed. the ample witch. the frail protagnoist. hollow in his manufactured purpose.

a sturdy weakness.presses deep. all spiders and bricks. a storm that makes no sound.

fractured images. in prude's lipstick and whore's pantyhose.  the  mind's stalwart ghosts haunting all the wrong places.

a deaf universe hardly listening. as the heavy hours wick.

a stumbling flame. a broken window. a petulant winter. thick with choices.