the buttons are soft on time's weary keyboard.

all our dogged epiphanies summarily dismissed.

no more wilted adjectives to give us pause.

the chains are limp on truth's withered engine.

as we barrel forward. blindfolded and adamant.

the last of our claws sold to the sheep.

trust is a vile consent. built on borrowed beginnings.

we spend our choices on temporary things.

because temporary is what we've always been. 

the hours stumble over the remains of our thoughts. 

no more nervous adjectives to tangle our breath. 


the narrative chokes on its fading protagonists. 

the end switftly asserts itself. 


time is an infinite passageway. 

teeming with open doors. 


i aksed her name as she stroked the sharpest corner. 

she polished the edge as its razors ripened. 


we screamed at gravity. 

as the world came tumbling down. 

 the coin was loud as it shimmied to its inevitable halt. finally flat against the tilted table at which we anxiously sat.

still we kept counting. expecting more to fall. 

eventually, we abandoned the precarious whims of arithmetic. determiend to discover a more generous defeat. 

bargaining with the edge. our faces plastered to the wind. while gravity undid its zippers. 

the end stout and fickle. as it spent our dwindling choices. 

the window was soft and unsure. full of faces and shame. 

and all the obvious confessions. 

time is a weak menace. all faded make-up and failed parodies. 

we've been thieves for so long that there's nothing left to steal. 

the world was all studious conjunctions. and lazy adjectives.

exceptions came and went. in a tumultuous pantomime. little needles in deep veins. all their threads too nervous to believe.

the truth yawned. a rushed facimilie of our lives. all borrowed colors. and lingering grays. bored with our constant hysteria.

we spent each other in nickels and dimes. poorer with every touch. wasting our promises on flower petals and mud.

time was a generous assassin. as it slit our throats. carefully collecting each drop of blood.

knowing we might need it again someday. 

orphans scratch out the tenuous diaries of circumstance and skin. 

no silver fists to prove our mettle. nor tattered buckets in which to collect our missing pieces. 

we continue to chase the world. even as its claws shred our flesh. stiffened by corners that only get sharper. 

paupers of why in an aristocracy of when. 

their faces all gone. their lies long since spent. 

the premise is corrupt.  

the end yawns and we are discarded. 

trembling blades in a forgotten war. 

we say we don't remember. 

as time slits its wrists and bleeds all over us.

the kitten tripped over her own claws as she began the hunt.

the screen was dark as she searched for prey.

the world was distant as she began to stalk.

all the numbers forgotten. all their faces worn away.

still young enough not to trust her luck.

against the pandemonium of chance.


the light fumbles against the sunset. struggling to last.

time tightens its knots. abrupt episiotomies to her indifference.

numbing lingering wounds.

she's hungry enough to struggle.

confident enough to surrender.

she paces. all anxious fangs and bitten tongues.

as the carcasses answer all her questions.

no more delicate lies upon which to perch our expectations. 

only the stout edges. and the insipid corners with which to fabricate our maps. 

the truth is both a thief and an ally. but we never know which one it'll be at any given interesection. 

a little spit to soften the bandages. and then we're ready to bleed again. 

they write on the walls. the muted screams of perpetual victims. 

the world is still loud long after we've forgotten how to hear. 

drowning in trust's dubious math. temporary villains climb into our beds. 

shouting so loudly that we almost believe them. 

there is agency in the perpetuity of skin. a panicked cacophony of choices that we conflate with consent. 

we falter under the breadth of our convictions. curious flowers in a stilted garden. 

the world is smooth and bright. even as we close our eyes against the flood.

though the water isn't deep enough to drown us. its currents easily pull us under. 

there are doors we keep locked up tightly. in our softest places. defiant markers that prove who we've been. 

we wear these fragile costumes. even as their colors wither away. 

charmed by the temporary paradise of thieves. 

abandoned flesh chokes on its hunger for new inhabitants.

dirty claws scratch at the gallows.

time's delicate assassins gather their nooses.

gravity smiles.

as the ground slips away.

gravity forgets us. once we've fallen too far.

a series of small cuts in time's wizened wrist.

serve as our map. as we navigate this expiring flesh.

we push closer to the center.

fragile monsters slouching on their crumbling horns.

choke on the ugly choices that have sharpened our claws.

the distance stumbles. a slender rope suspending a weighted bridge.

we run. our feet made of dust and clay. toward what we know not.

except away from where we've been.

turning on the fickle parable of touch.

fully committed to love's sublime abattoir.

solvent numbers spend our voices. the surreptitious equations of seldom ghosts.

a single crease. a tiny wrinkle. and time is in pieces.

the glorious puzzle of skin. solving us from end to beginning.

grief carves its maps in our flesh. leading us deeper into infectiious strangers.

we sway with the heavy pendulum of touch. striking hard against the bitter toll of when.

i'm not yours. i never was. the dead don't belong to anyone.

you're not mine. you never were.

love is always borrowed.

we can never own it. 

the time machine tramples its metaphor. stray cinema in the distribution of change. tomorrow threads its needle. absently mending the gap in inertia. 

the distance chokes on its last words. ambivalent confessions stumbling down broken staircases. 

the minute details color feverishly inside the lines. while dense amateurs attempt to edit their losses. 

how far becomes a reflection of how close it once was. 

againt the relentless momentum of conceit. 

the dismal corners tease their answers. stained pillows on beds where we can no longer rest. 

the time machine paces between now and then. a failed constant in the crippling perpetuity of flesh. 

the distance continues. a borrowed conjunction. too stubborn to care.

whether the quetsions it's asking can ever be answered. 

 

we arrive. all burnt hair and singed voices. in the hollow economy of lust.

love is a special kind of violence. all small bites and delicate cuts.

we begin. as everything does. strident and stark. struggling for breath.

life is a curious puzzle. more missing pieces than anything else.

we learn. by bruises and by fractures. animals in human faces.

savage. because that is what the world has made us.

the numbers stopped counting too long ago to still taste.
jagged templates of skin layered like abandoned graves.

time is a solvent. that turns mercenaries into beggars.

the body is an equation. doomed to be reconciled only in death.

sometimes we cut slowly with worn blades that bend to easily.
the parable of our contentment stumbling over its choices.

eyeless dolls in sugar dresses. swaying to songs only they can hear.

sometimes we cut quickly with claws
that grow sharper the more that we use them.

angry kittens in a sinking basket.

time looks in our windows. with big eyes and clenched fists.

we pretend not notice as it chews on the glass.