It was in yesterday that tomorrow became clear. Fundamental ghosts. The attic unprepared for their visit. The election. Time campaigning hard. To move me. The bridge. Frozen in the open positions. All ships able to pass through. No one. Nothing. Capable of crossing it.

I had apples in my basket. Trees I could recall looming in the shade of. Still young enough to assume the fruit would always fall.

Skin. Depth. Long streaks of comic book. Sheets drying in the wind. Thougthless. The clean stolen from them.

The words on the small of her wrist. Minutes counting to nowhere. Nothing. The world. In hungry slurps. Drinking us in. As we were only water. To quench. Its endless thirst.

For people. Excuses. That it should still be here. After all these years of having disappointed us.

Time stops every now and then. No one notices. The skins the world has shed. Or the people who are counting the minutes until it starts again.

Flesh. Calm matador of when. Urge the bull to rush.

Liars with long yardsticks measure the truth in snickers of quarks. Lonely atoms flirting with the surface of the bomb. We woke up the devil from his nap. And now he wants a lullaby.

The square root tells us how. Work backwards from the negative. Solve for nothing. Ignore the rest. Go there. That the future yields to the whims of fickle flesh. Time only a loud heartbeat in empty hands. Life limping from fist to fist. In games of giving away what has yet to exist.

The man on his page. Stabbing hard blank sheets of paper. Ready eyes blaming the emptiness for what he cannot say.

The anomoly. Weak men. Weaker women. Blame the arithmetic. As their numbers dwindle.

So many of us. So few.

I brace myself for the algebra of his touch. A menagerie of zeros. Coo our exchange of skin. A circus of lips claim our faces. As if time still knew. The proximity of when. The nature of the if. The creaky swing. Almost near enough. To catch itself. As I become the one to find her that way.

Still the x is solved to nothing new.

Two movies. One sad. Two hands. One empty.

Wake up! He shouted. I'm bored. But she had so been enjoying being deaf.

The hammock between her legs. Swinging softly with the absence. Of so many things she almost had. All skin is borrowed. She tries them on. All touch is artificial. Tastes sweeter than it is.

The science of alone. A debatable ratio of now and then. We are here. And there. The crush of possibilities soothes the dead. She stares. Anticipates him flipping that switch in her grin. The long laugh of curious molecules colliding with fact. Radiant heat. The catastrophe of together. Atoms colliding.

The map festering in her skin. Bloated blisters erupting with the places she's never been. Occasionally she convinces time to forget. but always. too soon. it remembers.

Playing cards with the devil. Betting everything on nothing. Pretending to know why there are.

Two bodies. But only one motive.

One nail of the wall. Waiting for a portrait.

The moon was close. The stars were far. She had her time machine in her back pocket. So she could go back without being seen. So she could prove the doll wasn't naked, but later undressed. To sneak the poison into those needles. Steal the vaccine from the disease.

Don't try too hard she warned him. as the dress obscured her face. Blindness is a condition of wanting what we can't have.

Tell me the truth. That I don't matter. And never will. That you're more defective than empty beds can cure. Tell me lies. That I mattered. The friction of clean sheets on dirty skin. The cage door opening. All prisoners afraid to leave.

The moon gets too close sometimes. Especially when you're looking up. The lies will do. Melting snowmen. Time machines to argue with. As everything and nothing.

changes.

I thought you knew better than to trust. Broken levers. The selfish math of time machines consuming us.

In the habit. The chug of skin that decides how alone this is. The wagging tail. The little mouse. With fingers made of lead. Trying to arrange a lifetime of vertigo.

The sad. The near enough. The poets with their leather hearts. Laughing as we ride bareback. The words that make it easy to remember. The occasions that make it impossible to forget.

I could fuck you, but then I'd have to hate you again. For reminding me I really haven't changed at all.

I would talk to the man, but the boy interferes. It seems he woke up one morning older than he ever thought he'd be. I wasn't the cure, but I seemed like good medicine.

He wanted control. Over something. Someone. But all my knobs were stuck. He couldn't turn me on.

Sad men in their nervous traditions. Lose the ghost and gain the victim. In bouts of empty attics.

The aging portrait not listening. The time machine too stubborn to persuade her.

Orange thighs. Carrots to peel. The meat. Sour choices in starvation. The knife. Dull enough. To scrape away the shadows on the walls. Paint on her lips. Turns her words into jests. Long jokes stumble over their clumsy punchlines.

We laugh.

Because it's so unamusing.

We speak because the silence is too lonely to bear.

It mattered to her. She was pressing buttons on the walls. Constructing airplanes from numbers. Dividing people into poetry. Searching for that common tear in the continuum.

Going back. Taking it with her in the forward. The key in the lock. The window in her fist. Breaking. Red blue through the glass. Gravity making art from her wounds. Locks. Tepid lips. Spilling red. Maps drawn in empty underwear. The room vomiting. Knives and fingernails. The colors of the bed.

After all the time machines have left.

Still determined to go back again.

Kill the clock.

Slip on that dirty mask. So they'll recognize me again.

Lie. Say I've always been there. Waiting for the machine to catch up to the man.

The cellar. Cautious toes tempt the steps down. The pull. Loose dresses betray her hips. In little grins pungent with the pageants of lazy gods. The earth. Like a grave. The whisper of touch. Laces tied by nervous fingers. The coax of footprints. The patience of the sand.

The child. The seduction. Every breath is helium. The air too heavy. Time too arrogant. To suspect we could manipulate what it does to us.

I find the beginning. Drag the end to it. I steal the sound of his failing attempts to own her. I listen. And am deafened by the silence.

The cellar. The grim. of cooking witches in candy houses. The woods. The sanctuary. Of victims. As they please the fire.

The accurate. The seldom. The man with his back to the window. The world close enough to grab.

The time machine between her thighs rages. Unfortunate lovers search for their gods. In the glassy eyes of dead poets. Heaven is shaped like a vagina. Purgatory looks like a dick. A leaky faucet dripping with wisdom's it's best not to swallow.

The time machine take her no further than she's ever been. The same stories she heard as child. Monsters she admits. Make the story interesting. If a story is a enough.

It's easy enough to go there. Embrace the physics of the skeleton. Stretches of skin too thin to cover us. We look for people to wear. Or zippers. Teeth at the back of their touch. Bites to blame for all that is missing.

Scratching hard at the freckles on her shins. Reasoning with the time machine. There's nowhere else to go. Except where I've always been. Take me there again. Convince them I never left.

The future between my legs. The past there too. Red. Red catapults. Heave their stones. At busy pigs.

I can show them where the hole is, but it's not something they can fill.

I still wait. For the wolf. To blow my house down.

At twelve years old she discovered herself. In the shadow of the clothes she'd taken off. It was years still before she would find there was a whole world out there. Beside herself. Full of girls better off without their clothes and men inclined to assist.

Say what you will about the lottery, someone wins.

Sure, everyone else loses. It's like life that way.

Not that dying would be any different.

Life after all, is merely the sum of the skins we're determined to wear and those that we're willing to discard. It's easier she's found if she can forget what she wants and focus on what she can have.

Dialogues in cream cheese. Soften too slowly. Villains say they know. They do.

Maybe everything. Perhaps nothing. It's not the answer that matters. It's how she arrives at it.

The garden still grows though she's not there to water it. The sun still burns though she hasn't seen it for years. In fits of arithmetic is how he touched her. In hernias of algebra is how they made love.

Integers of flesh extrapolating the sum of paradise from dead skin.

She was twelve years old, maybe thirteen when this big world finally began to make sense. She finally learned it wasn't about what she had. All that mattered was what was absent.

Spiders on the porch. Darkness wakes the web. Laughing through her fear. Her embarrassment at having been born. In stages full and bright with she tries on the threat. Patient to let it consume her.

Her eyes exploding with people. Parachutes of skin that navigate her fall. The bile of hope fouls her dress as her cloud wretches. She continues to climb. Noticing too late that the steps to the bottom are so far apart.

She sells herself in little bags. Small handfuls of change. She removes her face. A vending machine of woman. Doling out fractions of touch. In minor orgasms.

The lie of the self is that it wants happiness. Or is even capable of producing it. The majestic feats of drug we imagine are within our means.. The abyss of consciouness only chemicals can quell. Delicate kisses of ocean on dry beaches. Deposting the dead in the same places from which they took us.

Stealing the living.

These empty hands helpless to stop them.

Coming and going as they please.

Eternal. Uninterested in the mating rituals of broken men

Spiders on the porch. Neglectful of their webs. Paralyzed prey waiting to be eaten. Light bulbs inside the wounds. Switched on again. Illuminating the disease.

The constant.

The gods of lesser men.

Everywhere I am. Sultry lies in the cough of skin. As if I could go that far. In either direction. See you there. Make sense of these long equations we call touch.

Ants on the cake. Cockroaches in the frosting. The ensuing explanations of dead men. Long novels searching for characters. The density of inhibition convincing me that time was mistaken.

Them. Overhearing. Every minute of until. Escaping. Realizing nothing was the same. Except what had always been.

Awoken. By the sound of dying. Or those that would pretend. To know how close it is.

Something like falling asleep. And also like waking up. Trying on the meat. Her underwear red. Her bra too loose. I don't know. Don't want to know. What I haven't seen since this blindness. Mousetraps at the edge of my world killing anything capable of finding the cheese.

I'm over. I'm already done a long time ago. Puppets are left. So to their strings. I can't stop them from making me dance.

Words favor the liars. Actions favor the strong. What am I? Just the lonely branch at the top of the tree. The monkey with the novel in his hand that no one can read.

Where I was. Where I am. Places like carbon. Duplicating. Coins dancing in pockets.

Waiting for time to stop.

Or for someone to notice it still hasn't begun.

I could go anywhere. If I ever bothered to try. I could go anywhere, but it's so hard to leave where I've been.

Lie, she said. You always do it. Feet. Toes. Fingers. Pretending to know what they feel. Take me back, he said. I've gone too far. The future is passed. And there is no place for me to exist. I'm dead before I was born. I could save myself, but I won't.

Guilty wagers in between. That life and this one. Seams in the teddy bear favor the stitch. But I've lost my needle. I guess it's easy to forget. But it's just as easy to remember Just look.

Seeing comes in convulsions. Seizures of touch. An ambulance of lovers. Stuck in traffic. I don't mind dying. It's the waiting to I hate.

Stroke the apple carefully. Release the poison. Convince the devil you have a plan.

I don't want anything.

That is the problem.

Passage was close to time travel. The green dress on her young bones made that quite apparent. The world was closer than it had ever been. Little ants building castles in her panties. Passage had so many meanings. She couldn't decide which one fit.

Maybe then. Pale thighs in short skirts made of fists. Scabs explaining themselves to the infection.

Maybe now. The pus like a river. Limbs working. Time the one enemy we've always had in common. Even before it mattered.

The poison was always there. Only now we've found it. She remembers herself at last. Knowing it's too late.

Not to forget again.

Maybe then. When her pussy was still thorny with the poke of strangers. And now was only one of many candles not blown out on a very stale birthday cake.

She finds herself, but doesn't know if the search is over.

The piglets in their little houses. Each one quite oblivious. Until the mortar. And the bricks.

Not falling down has its disadvantages. I miss the wolf. The bluster and pomp of fear. Exposed and hopeless as the world tumbles into to a temporary sanctuary. The pulse of skin counting the moments While we trace their footsteops. In thick pieces of chalk. That remind me of dying. In the deep scratches on the asphalt that we make as we walk.

Stepping cautiously over the bodies we don't want to be in. Peeling the glove from the thought in sweaty dismissals of whom. How. And when.

Cracking the egg. Poison in my palm. Close my fist and squeeze. Until there is a difference between then and now.

The beach. Breathless thighs arguing with the ocean. There. Assuming the spectacle of her touch to be fascination enough to convince him. Time was wrong about passing.

Building her time machine from fallen hairs and bitten fingernails. Nibbles of skin his watchband spit up. The principle is constant. Slow yourself down. Arrive in the past. Find the bridge. Be it in hardened condoms or the soft whiskers of his greying beard.

It's not travel at all. It's just a matter of standing still long enough to notice what I've lost.

Amuse me. Make it hard to laugh. Soil. Preaching to her toes. Grass. Jesus naming the creatures again. They're still new enough? He begs.

Strong. Bitter words contradict. The melodies of the damned. I was a scarecrow for a while. Lying about what was guarded. To the hungriest. I was straw. And old shirts. No one would want to wear again. Telling the lies the grown tired of.

I was fields. Tall stalks. Striving for the sun.

I could hear their footsteps. Roll in the mud of each decision. Hookers raising their pieces. as the need tapers off. Small flowers on long stems. Hoping the rain will return. Hoping that the rain that has fallen will last.

Her skin like a drugstore. waking up. Tomorrow seems a punishment. The disease more relevant than the cure. Trying on new men.

They're all old she says.

Nothing's changed.

Deafness sour on her parting lips. Her eyes the verb. Her ass the adjective. In short lived narratives called touch.

Done.

The barbarians satifsfied. The clock indifferent. As she sauntered between now and if. The future on its toes. Windows everywhere. To glimpse. To imagine. The names of colors we'd so often used. The past on catapults. Without a clear target.

The deafness. The fungus of her fingers. Spreading. In deep infections. Unreachable itches.

The reservoir. Pennies gathered. In a thousand misplaced wishes. Collecting dimensions. Parallel to the moments. Travelling time in thrusts and jabs. Cutting her wrists with the sharp edges of the sheets.

Bored.

Uninterested.

Fingers and toes. Eyes and lips. Clay pots drying in an empty oast. Hardening so long.

Just to make the falling matter.

Structure. The dark counting toes. Fingers. Naming the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. As it comes from behind her. In quick autopsies of the moment the cause of death is determined.

Delirium. Torn parachutes carry on fingertips of wind. Feign flight in their falling.

Candles sweat. And cameras bark. Half way up broken ladders. In buildings on fire. On dolls we once thought real. The skin falls off. And I begin to love the skeletons that they are left.

Awakened by the sun. Closing my eyes again. Trying to see.

The blood on those pretty pitchforks. Panties searching for their pussies. For their periods. Blood and children all the same to skin. Flaunting the obvious. Men and gods the same when you're a woman. Easy to manipulate. Lost in a seas of tits.

I think Satan was right when he said man shouldn't have free will. It's wasted on us.

Can't wake up. Peel the polish from her ass. In chokes of color no one sees. Can't fall asleep. Dissemble the skeleton. Label the bones. For later. When war is tired enough. To consider surrender.

Lost.

Life is just this. These hours. Doomed to contemplate all the things that haven't happened. Life is strong. It goes on and on. Life is fragile. It's constantly tripped. By the footprints we made before it found us.

I am lost. Too far ahead. Waiting for the world to catch up. Telling lies I already know they won't believe.

Now. Like a guillotine. Comes crashing down. Headless aggregates assume the limbs left behind by the dead.

Numbers in the spaces between touch and feel. Colors to negotiate the shape of alone. Skin is a cryptograph. Sex is the solution to it. The riddle is what to do with all this confidence.

Seal the monster up in this cage of ribs. Where everything goes to die. Or let it loose upon to feed upon this voracious landscape of flesh.

Either way.

There's still this war. And all these corpses. To bury.

Either way.

No one's hurt. Except those that I was trying to save.

So many missing time machines make it impossible to know.

Where I was.

Where I was going.

Too many iterations of us. I can't tell if we ever knew each other.

It's just time. Wearing bras too small. Scratching in old ledgers. Failing to subract. Each dimension with its own threat. Bleeding soft. THe reamins of too much ink ony my wrists. Pharmaceuticals unquenched in the dark of my drawer. Until something remembers what I cannot. Too much of it. The truth mushrooming. The subtle destruction right has wrought. Ambivalent. Transparent as a whore.

I'm right. I've gone too far back. There is no time machine anymore. I'm there. Like a wasp. Counting the stings to kill the ant. I'm there. Without a time machine. Trying to prepare myself for when it's gone.

An failing even before it's happened.