the difference confronts. paper knives give chase and narrow margins run. portions. the cruel serendipity of coincidence. and fear. the simple math of skin and meat. we either add or subtract. everything else is just irony.

there are curves. there are angles. skin like picture books. lips like fairy tales.

there are places. there are exits. the road surrenders. the distance forgives.

the road is closed, but the detours are infinite.

the bridges open. the world pauses. it's easy to forget how quickly it will resume.

there is no map. just the lines we draw in the dirt. and the habits we collect. the delerious treasures of ghosts and orphans.

we might be lost. we might be found. it all depends on whom you ask.

the panic whispered. heavy lightbulbs in the suffocation of want. incandescent. all theft and shame. in the perpetuity of lost.

varieties of sober. like chewing gum and religion. a practical insanity.

how sobbed. the fever of distance. all red dresses and burnt camouflage. as the war slouched onward. in various theories and impossible causes.

maybe, she thought, still swept up in the revisions. evolution thundering inside her head. some impotent monster with sharper teeth than claws. I see the shore, though I am adrift. I know how to swim, though I've been sinking.

it's a small world they agreed. all hurricanes and patios. the grim suburbia of trust betrays us all. witches in their candy houses burn the same for every orphan.

the universe shouts. sick with saviors.

it was simple. or it was before now. travelling that narrow path between hope and defeat.  just another primate with a wet matchbook and the delusion of warmth.

we wandered. drops of water in the wind. we waited. empty skeletons in a holocaust of skin. we played dead. because that was what we'd always been.

the anchor was embedded too deep. the water was too eager. the ocean came and went. like so many soiled bandages. on  hungry wounds. and the lonely scars that name them.

the maps confuse her. the math of the incline a little too advanced. the arc of the flesh much simpler than expected. her voice all wet ant hills and temporary picnics.

the resonant panic of simple gods. as the weather guesses us into existence. all hills and conditions.
the cars on the shoulder. full of exhaust and freedom.

the space between us. the angles too narrow to see.

Wet corners. Flesh wagered in parables and tickets to zen. The edge. A unity of oblivion. A crusade of conditions. Ripe with conspiracies of when.

Common thieves. The fulcrum of madnesss. Shifting the balance. Weighted. Voices like gauze caked with the sickness.

The moment folds. An ambivalent monarch in a kingdom already spent. The scene happens. Though its audience is bankrupt. A dialogue of pauses. In a war of momentum.

Soft edges. The critical paradox. Condensates of time. The echo of distance in the vacuum of lost.

The constant. Shivers in the map. Choices like a contagion. Infecting everything.

Sleep in nickels and pennies. Progress swallows.

The protagonist continues to pretend. The story is enough.

the perpendicular. in pale sobs. stitched skin and patchwork dresses. picking at the scabs. the unfortunate hunger of life. arriving like kings. exiting like paupers.

the template. pretending colors. where only outlines exist. the consistent demons. as she treads water. imagining the ocean to be small. fearing that it is.

a feast of the practical in a famine of madness.

the quiet songs that steal the sky. the loud ones that forget to listen. all mercury and chromium in the antipathy of loss.

no funerals. only travelling. possessed by that halting road.

corners. swollen with decision. stale maps stolen by contrition.

Ordinary devils burned by paradise.