Listen. Blunt boxes trouble themselves with our future. The autonomy of broken skin wears its dominion in thick punches. To the face. Bottles to easy to lift. Find their way. To my lips. As empty as I know they always were.

Working the calculus. In prevalent theorems. The shiver of the Numbers. Teases a truce.

That this war has an end. That this nightmare can be woken from. That closed eyes see much better. Than blind ones I once trusted.

Barbarians flaunt their pitchforks. Their pointy wheels. Roll mercilessly through the terrain. As the future takes over. Unwilling to explain.

Parachutes without cords. The sky accelerating. The streets try to brake. Empty machines repel us forward. In a thoughtless discharge of energy. Warm bodies receive. The unexpected propulsion. But it's wasted on these idling bodies.

I'm always watching. That is my weakness. That the watching changes everything.

Everyday. The sun rises with a sense of entropy. Every night it sets with the same. The further I go back the less real this is. Angels looking for their underwear. Among the foul of wasted semen.

Paper dolls strung from arm to fist. Telling stories about loose belts. And hungry dogs. The meat is the same. Though she divides it differently. Since she decided it's as random as it isn't.

She wonders about. The cat in the chamber. Is it alive or dead. She watches. The chaos of loose skin. Struggling for bones that fit. The pieces experiment enough to convince her. It's the watching that broke them.

Islands in her way. Turning on their axis. The arithmetic of naked spoiling her logic. Division has never been longer. Fractions never so small. As they are right now. In the belly of this sickly quest to recover from the diseases that make me whole.

Choices turn the time line back on the ghosts. Draping this flesh in phantom skins. I'm gone. I'm transparent and fading. As useless as the wings on a penguin. I'm biting on the wind. As it teases change. That doesn't come. I'm hissing at the cold. As it fails again. To make me forget the sun.

The longer it's gone the more I think about it.

She never understood the mechanics of grief. Just closed her eyes and pressed the button. Hoping for anywhere else. Torn flower petals in the pockets of dead men. For the hopeful to paste back together.

She never tried to quantify the illusion of love. She just closed her eyes and let them inside her.

In that me. In that when. I became her. The little girl. In the basement. Imaging there are windows where none exist. In the future we chose. In the past we were chosen by. Thousands of paths. Each one our own. In this organic kaleidoscope.

The lie told itself. I needed only wait. For someone to believe it.

The boxes heavy with dust. The light in the attic impatient. As it shined on what was not there. The shadows of if I had. Toiling through her body. In dark mazes missing solutions.

In that me. In that brittle apocalypse. I had counted all the numbers. Found the wolf out of breath. And all the pigs' houses still standing. No one inside them.

I continued with my work on the formula. The drastic in his forehead. The organics of then. Tiny spiders. Elaborate webs. The lantern on her wrist. Tired of searching.

The hours arriving in stolen breaths. I borrow what I can. Make do without the rest. I see sky falling. And I open my arms to catch it.

The diagram. In equal proportions. Of how to if. The protons tangling their quarks. In a flurry of indecision. The numbers come in arrant sparks. The sky dissolves into her waning vision. A loose algebra of empty skin.

It's meat. Juices. And water. The same as we all are. She fills her ladle and waits for someone to present a bowl. The meal is only a single dimension. In a series of tests. The knives in her stare don't kill them. They just make them easier to catch.

The voice over explains that she's discovered a constant. In amongst all the vagaries of the hunt. A grave she can solicit. For the eulogies she covets.

The sand too soft to draw in. This swing too easy to abuse. As she banters with the contingent. In her search for more.

Just oblong particles vaguely accelerating. In a catastrophe of things to do. The treasure map in her underwear. The poison in her stockings.

She waits for the world to happen. But there is only that same machine.

Blind painters and deaf musicians. Asking the moment to forgive them.

The meat on the stove simmering. The house all afoul with the dead things I must consume. She tries to count the atoms in each molecule of his skin. But loses her place somewhere in the billions.

It's a long walk she knows. From the front door to the back. Even in this small house. Where all the walls are deaf. The outside. That freedom is always distant. As it should be. Especially with addicts.

The warm nights cull what little is left of her fruits. The weather embeds its paradigms in her flesh. But she doesn't listen. To the hungry wind. Doesn't see. The darkness struggling. With the mania that is memory.

Thinking in ghosts. Deciding in morticians. There are fragments. There are wholes. But they always choose too late.

The bureaucracy of skin defeats her. Closets full of monsters only she can see are there. The moon is always full. It just hides from us. Chasing shadows on the surface of the sun. As we helplessly wonder when the rain will stop.

There is no winter. No summer. Just places that turn us. Hot and cold. Vague pandorums. Where the empty box waits. For all those evils to return.

I die to the same song every night. Too many times to count. Then I wake up in the morning. Knowing only this loose flesh. And why it's still mine. Vagina's like ticking clocks. Counting down to the alarm. When it won't matter. Penises like pendulums. So many hours that fail to wake me up.

I'm sleeping on the floor next to a shadow of when. The moon used to chase us as we ran. I'm looking behind myself to find it. But it's not there.

The strays on the corner congregate in a clump of dirty nightgowns. Measuring the speed at which the particles must collide in order to remember. Why this ever mattered. Or if it could again.

The burlap on her forehead saving its creases for heavier objects.

The wolf with the pigs' ribs in its jaw was sufficient high enough. The birds in the tiny houses I'd built for them. Coddling eggs soon to be lunch. Karma has no spoils that humanity hasn't already quantified. Too many impotent gods on heavy thrones fumbling with their doses of Viagra.

She knows lost. Better than anyone. Deep striations in the softer pockets of skin. She keeps her fairy tales all in a spreadsheet. Rows and columns of stubborn malice. Lonely men with their underwear around their ankles. Chasing after the young.

Discarding her plate still half full. Or half empty. Depending upon how you view the heroine. She is a victim. Of many things. And also a villain of the same.

Watching the world in old films black and white. Like it has always been this way. Throngs of actors. Reciting the same old story. As if the tragedy has been festering there. In the all the moments she gave away.

Just lonely men. And the gaping graves in their faces. As they fail to charm the women that get in their way.

Little chokes of thanks. As I embrace the suffocation. Long stories she only tells with her eyes. Written in her brow.

She teases the genie. Blowing on the bottle. Not making a single wish. She wishes for nothing. She wishes the genie wasn't inside it. Waiting to capitalize on a moment of weakness.

She stands over the oven. Gazing at the witch cooking inside. Nibbling on the load bearing cinnamon sticks throughout the candy house. Feeling his thrust more than his touch. The sweet. The sugar melting. In a dilution of choices.

She waits. For the moon to catch up. As she wanders the barren uterus of the future. A collection of moments to be harvested, but never born. Footprints. Following each other. In the circles they have wrought.

Content with the trauma. Charmed by the romance tragedy insists. She scribbles over the numbers. Spills all her paints on the empty spaces. Tiny matadors.

The colors change. The particles decide for us. Her timeline drawn in pencil. Her choices written in ink.

The pendulum in her eyes. The hours becoming more than a feast. The claws of the kitten. Finding our skin. Fragile cuts answer the ghosts. As we watch the bubble. Time caught. Between then and now. Stale and willing to surrender. To the choices that we make.

It's not cold in here. It's just me. The winter shouts. The summer whispers.

One small parachute. In the radiance we accuse. Of being a villain. Time is not a monster. It always lets us decide. Be it by broken switches in this foul flesh. Or the echo of empty glass as I take that last sip.

Time is only the punctuation in all the things I'm afraid to do. Stout stop signs on bleak highways. No rooms in those empty inns. I

I didn't build the button, but I understand it. We're not anywhere at all. Until someone finds us.

And there's no one looking.

Empty seats on the bus stare knowingly. Downtown. Searching for faces that always disappear. The sun setting on over sized wheels. As the world passes by in blurry snapshots.

She doesn't know. It might be far. It could be near. If it even exists at all. That tangled spectrum of epiphanies in which life occurs. The shadow of dying gods making a path for her. As the the red lights unravel behind.

Taking only inches. Calculating in centimeter. The breadth and the weights of failing suns tethered to her shoulder. As she stumbles on through stories never spoken. Dull knives choking on the tough meat. Left over after we've harvested the sweet of the organs.

Taking it off. A piece at a time. The shackles painted on her wrists. Running in the rain. Her hair pasted to her face. Her choices dwindling. As her prison decays.

It's ugly she says. Of the space between her legs. Empty. Dark. And wanting too much from. The farce that is lovers.

Seasons at her back. The weather in long trenchcoats. Loosely covering her. Derisively letting in the cold. She breathes in long division. Thinks in fractions. Sleeps on her knees. Walks on her toes. There are too many places still to see and nowhere left to go.

She writes the numbers down. Naming them. Silly names. Only a lonely child would use. Beautiful things turned ugly by mere perception. Porcupines making love. Heavy stones to smother the fire we've abandoned.

She chases the darkness. Unable to keep pace. She writes her name down in the dirt. And waits for the calm of the wind to make it untrue. The pendulum in her fingers. Crossing out each moment before it has happened. The hours in her fist building. For years.

Until they are too heavy for her to hold.

Subtle thieves. Play their magic tricks. On naked girls. And the clothes that no longer fit. She catches the bulb. Just before it breaks. Barely escaping the lamp. So much darkness to overcome. So many sidewalks still to pave. As she watches the cars pass. Her thoughts a mousetrap. Her lips the bait.

It's never over. We just forget why we came here. Why we had to leave. Old ugly trees shedding their bark. Squeaky swing sets. Toiling in the darkness. As I try on different skins.

Closets full of monsters never kept me awake. It's the empty spaces that frighten me.

The bricks are patient with their mortar. The trowel is confident in its wall. Everything else worries.

The dreams I have are always the same. Missing ladders as I try to reach the attic. The needles on the floor as I count the dimensions. Eleven. Maybe more. It doesn't matter. I've been to them all.

Nothing changes.

Or everything does. And I'm too lost to notice anymore.

Years. Then. Over came suddenly. Broken robots. And lost molecules. On their path. Stuck in short stories. And mine much too long. I outlived them. And then there was nothing. No one to blame. Nobody to ask for directions. Just somewhere I had never been. And no reason to go home.

The scales in her eyes always weighing. The cadavers. As she played with the dead. The rope skipping. Eroding the earth as she jumped. Again and again. Over the shadows that would not relent.

Just uniforms she told him. As the future decided. The moment was insufficient. Fingers dug in to useless buttons. All our weapons gone.

Fighting was easy. The anger always made sense. It was surrender with which she struggled.

The long winters in between faces. Bitten apples souring in her fist. The shaky ladders below her window. Allowing those strangers entrance.

The grass turning brown under her feet. As she searched for the pavement. Every story telling itself. While she listened.

The winter inside her skin. The cracks beginning to show.

Loose bricks. The wall trembles. Against the echo. Of absent tears. Soft stitches pull the blankets close to her thighs. As she reaches for the trigger on dead demons. Just a stairway. A cellar. The bottles ripe with fermented faces. The strays on the moon's blade. The rest of us too lost to notice. The bad men.

The hysterics of bored girls in their mother's beds. Prying the bitten fruit from strong hands. The purple hiss of dying snakes. The frailty of their venom. As we bathe in various poisons.

Red apples on the tongue. Olive branches on the spine. Rotting wood under her feet. As she paces. Not deciding. Not caring if she ever will. choose. life or otherwise.

This place. Of hidden bruises. And harmless monsters. This forbidden Eden. Where I invest everything in my own weakness. It always finds me when I want to be lost.

It's too far. It's too close. Nothing to differentiate. I took the stairs. Though the elevator was free. I wanted to experience the path. It always rains. It never stops. The doors opened. I ran. As fast as I could. I fell down. Unfamiliar with the terrain.

I stayed there. I had no reason to get up.

Little tricks. The grammar plays on the arithmetic. Save us the trouble of admitting why. The future is more mechanics than trust. The birdcage on her wrist. Too loud with bridges I had to cross. The seam on her back easy enough to split. With a sharp knife and some patience.

She's just a doll after all. Fleece and stuffing to fool the heart. Soft things to conceal the hard edges of what we grasp.

The maze comes into focus. Easily enough. The rain thwarting the walls. In willful defiance. The monkeys leaving their porch light on. So that we might evolve.

The time line in her flesh. Coming undone. Like so many fishing nets dredging the empty bottom. The god at her door. Throwing its ball. Making games out of us.

The future fiddling with now. The difference. Minutes. Years. Maybe more. Maybe less. Nothing I can count.

The calm oblidge. Trusts in skin. The obvious. Folding ladders. Lacking hinges. Dirty shovels. The flowers growing right out of them. She quotes the silence. Eager to discover its inspiration. She toils in her skin. Working its weight free little by little. Until she is invisible.

She warns them her time machine is volatile. She could disappear at any moment. They don't worry.

She confesses. The world is bigger than she expected. Going there is easy. Leaving is the challenge. The basket on her arm as she approaches the villain. The red hood on her head. While she debates. If evil is incentive enough.

Her thighs a boney escalator. As I struggle for a better vantage. Her words. Just random buttons pressed. On machines I don't understand.

I warned the future to forget me. But it never listens. We went where we did. Our pockets full. We went to the future. Assuming it would be better. But we came back empty handed.

The time line held me hostage. Until I stopped caring. If the past was changed. I flrited with the mechanics. Of broken skin. The blood. Thin stairways. Patronizing bitter men.

Negotiating the demons. Within a reasonable tolerance. Stopping at the edge of the portal. Just to look. at what i've missed.

Two years later I heard from him again. Suddenly finding my face like the dirt under my nails that never comes out from them. Big lies in little packages. Gifts for the dead. And time travellers on their long journey back to the beginning again.

We are particles. We are dust. On the soles of the giants we call possibility. Imagining in color. Drawing in pencil. On scraps of paper torn from borrowed books.

I couldn't say how far. Nor how close. I was just then. To the things that we seek. Because those change. And so do we. But time. It just stays the same.

Awake in this coma. These imaginary walls a fitting prison. For the strangers I call myself by. These sentences always end with a preposition. Because the grammar of time is different. Because the numbers have another language. One I can understand, but cannot speak.

She chases the wolf. Because he has her candy. Unafraid because she had never been bitten. She challenges the witch. To build a house that isn't a lie.

Never mind. The obvious conundrum. Broken spades. Choke the soil. Smother the seeds in rotting earth. The hours culminate in postures my skeleton has trouble forgetting and my skin cannot keep straight. The dead bugs in the lamp look too much like us. The rattle of the filament reminds me of witches. Their candy houses souring in our bellies. As we attempt to digest.

All the worlds on our doorstep. All the super heroes we don't know. That smudge of lipstick plaguing her. As she tries to decipher her face. The roof is for the villains. The scale is for the rest. And what can't be measured is solution enough. To this enigma.

Her nightgown so infectious. As she seduces the bed. The equation of her touch not one that I can solve.

Nor would I want to know. The origins of such a stubborn utopia. The lies that make it almost real.

The next day. It bold reparation. For too many nights before. She takes off her face. The eyes underneath. Calmly detached from. The things we once thought mattered to us.

Lazy jigsaws work their pieces into the hole we've yet to fill. The words tumble. A string of dominoes. Set off by a tiny piece of skin. I've waited. Too long. For the heroes to catch up to villains.

I'd rather save myself.

No winter has an end. No summer a beginning. We just wait. Cut flowers. Manic Rasputin's. Fiddling with the magic of how to contain the strong. Using the sword. Encouraged by the blood on its handle.

To stab the dead.

Terrified by the corpses that our actions create.

I just listen deafly. To the words on their graves. Repeating. It's over. I write those letters. And never send them.

I count those hours. Again and again. In search of my time machine.

The fruit on her pillow ripening. With all the obvious charms of rotting meat. Wait. She warns me. The sun will catch up to us eventually. This darkness. It pretends to know.

The demons on her desk. Arranging the letters. In a studious alphabet. Of torn envelopes and empty pens. They are right. In that there's nothing left to say.

Just trembling girls shivering in their missing underpants. And the shadows they leave at their feet. As they crawl into their soiled beds.

She draws her maps on patches of empty skin. Each color stolen from a child not ready to give it away. And we navigate together. The lies that make love possible. In a world where it surely isn't.

She writes her stories. In obvious metaphors. As the tortoise ambles forth. She chases the hare. Thinking she can catch him. To explain. How valuable losing is.

The ladder waits at her window. The fire rages in her bed. Escape comes in punches. That knock out her wind. But she always recovers. Quick enough to laugh about. What she has lost.

The juices running clear as my fork dug into the meat. Isn't that allegory enough. For any bedtime story. Soft songs on heavy beds accelerating. As the world blinks too fast.

It's just a caution. Her lips like a yield sign. As I pause to integrate with oncoming traffic. The seasons come and go. Bad dreams to foul the depths of my sheets. She wakes up. Older still. That she was only moments ago. The little lies that lead us to this.

Broken leashes left in her fist. As bad dogs chew on the rotting carcasses. Of the things they have killed. The big screen. Trembling at her toes. Like tiny flower seeds. Flirting with the earth. Waiting for the rain. To wash away. All those expectations.

Long stories. She says will mean something eventually. If we are patient.

Chasing the rabbit down its hole. To discover how dark it is.

I'm not there when she wakes up. Not there when she falls asleep. But I know how hard it is. To keep counting.

Those obvious numbers.

Sometime later I confessed to having been there before. To knowing that it was hopeless. The ease by which a fraudulent grin escapes is just a symptom. Of a conspiracy greater than the sum of our skins.

I chased the wolf as far as I could. He was earnest in his endeavor. I questioned the pigs. About the houses they'd built. And the flaws in their conception. Offering them each a ride on my time machine. An opportunity to prepare for the future knowing what it would be.

Each one declined. Insisting the truth is not negotiable. The future more past than present. Fallen houses mean nothing when there's no one inside.

The stopwatch in her wrists counting. As he runs. The person under her skin pretending to know her. As he leans in for the kiss.

Everything is candy houses. And witches. With their warts to spread.

I wrote it down. The pass code. To enter her skin. But I've long since misplaced the paper upon which it was written.

Their vacant gazes. Itinerary enough. I've been nowhere too often not to want to go back. Sheep's lips on the blender. As the meat surrenders to the pot. And wolf tongues stuck to the cold metal pylons. As the winter loosely takes over.

I'm not wearing anything. I'm not anywhere at all. I don't exist. Save for what they might remember. And that is far too little.

The pirates boast. Stealing their gold from our secret places. The witches dance. In inkblots on paper I've scribbled over. The reason I can't find the cure is that this disease does not exist.

I am it. It is me. And we die together.

The marker dries out. The cap still in my mouth. As I wait for a reason to draw again. On those stark white pages that have always betrayed. The mattress groans as I crawl upon it. Searching for the ghosts that used to haunt it.

They're all alive again. But I'm still here. searching this massive coffin. For someone other than myself to blame.

The evolution of the skin bores me. Their lips petrified. Dead lumber. To be built by someone else. The thrust of the darkness tries on her weak pelvis. Like a lollipop half licked. The stick soft and exposed.

It's the future she whispers. Come to tell me. It's stronger than I am. It's the lipstick. She smears on his cheek as she kisses him. Looking for a name to put to the color. It's memory. Forgetting us.

It's taking pictures in the dark. Without a flash.

I was gone again. Empty bedsheets lay behind. To testify. Of the strangers I've encountered when left alone.

The villain straightened his necktie. The hero checked his every pocket. But neither could find. What was left to be saved.

I woke up in the darkness, though clearly it was long since day. Time travel takes its commissions. On heavy skin and fraying bones. I press the button. To stop the alarm, but it's still ringing in my head.

Flirting with the darkness. Dead pens gouge the paper. A hundred years from now. But tonight it's still just an empty page. Little girls on their tiptoes. Trying to see over the big men. So much commotion.

It's the end of the world again.

And I'm there. Or have been. But am still missing it again.

I would go back if I only knew where back was. But this is all I know. Piles of empty skins. Searching for their skeletons. In a sea of broken bones.

This was us. Beta solved in endless loops. Relentlessly undoing what must be done. Her lips raw with decisions she was bound to regret. Her eyes. A beautiful song whose words I could not remember. It's all just like cut grass. Whispering under foot. All those ghosts stomping on our garden. Too tired to care. That the dead are more alive than us.

The molecule is the victim. In this story I tell too much. Makeshift machines pretend to bring the future. My sheets tell another story.

I could catch her if I really tried. With honeydew and soft perfume. She merely a woman. Nothing so spectacular. That it can't be solved with a few algebra problems. The poetry of numbers is patient to a fault.

But the skin. It's always looking for a pattern. Some sequence to follow. Hungry for the promise of its next victim. The paper. Like soft bullets. Digging appropriate trenches.

I find the fragements so humble. As they cheat through our flesh. Empty shoes beside the door. Foul with the places I have been. Nowhere left to walk in them.

The barter reason enough. As the callous braves the structure of the skin. In distant feuds attached to many corpses. He was old, but still not old enough. The tremors full on as he dealt with relentless tomorrows. Intent on coming. Regardless of if he wanted them.

The darkness. A manic clairvoyant. With more future than I can stand. He climbs the stairs. As slow as any proverb. Grabbing those wisdom by their asses. Searching for a child in a world full of women. He's lonely. But it's not my fault. He's alone, but so am I.

As the atoms split, so too do they multiply. And we are pieces amongst them. Minor threads. Fiddling with the fabric. As our gods undress.