purple blankets fester. in the persistent cold. wet matches  rupture the vacuum.  small flames. pinch the darkness. distant noises. name their ghosts. unfinished portraits. more speculation than evidence.

life arrives in the bones. moist and dense. a slurry of confessions thick with blood and marrow. choice spoils fate. again and again. infects the skin and leaves it to revel in all its wonderful diseases.

close enough she confesses. touch is acid. easily boring holes in us.

her eyes. temperamental skeletons. trying to dance, though there isn't any music. just sound. as it listens to us struggle for gravity as we fall.

the end is patient. the war is fickle. brick by brick. the evolution solves for self, but rarely does.

the bars on this prison are so weak, yet its cage still persists.

you'll see me there, but it's someone else. a goblin imitating the mirror. a stranger trying on my skin. ignoring the wrinkles. excited by the darkness. searching for alone in a hurricane of faces. desperately remembering the quiet edge as the loud one approaches.

you'll see the tar. the dense portal of silence that sits between us. i've been searching for the map. all my life. still haven't found it. voices like blank paper. taunting me to read what was never there. i try to remember the world i knew before. the inside. all jelly and vinegar. thick and sharp stabs to the senses. and their virulent amnesia.

we'll trace the lines separately. wondering how they could ever meet. people. distant thunder. pouring rain. a preposterous flood for me to drown in. the distant echo of the margins. the hollow poetry of my disease. scratching on the glass. digging in the fire. content to burn.

you'll meet the broken doll and wonder how she walks. you'll talk to the empty chair and marvel at the shadow it casts.

simple stitches threading through the eye of time. hollow numbers. and their servant skin.  choosing each madness with open fists. the trail softens. the blood dries. this body is the coffin. time is the grave.

yellow armies sick with time. red soldiers steal the war in pieces. the end of the world has fractions. decimals to contend. that last touch has an algebra. equations to solve. simple tethers. child. student. death. sterile wars. fertile battles.

i could almost taste her. the slick of her resolve. foul with faces. the sour of her fearlessness. crowded roads. aggressive traffic. closer yet. the broken clock in her back. ticking loudly.  the stuck zipper in her throat. biting down. on a stale story suffocating a fresh heroine.

I'm old now. though i never knew i would be. it happens suddenly. life is quiet until it's loud. the simple prisons we construct. to prove it was real. that it can be that real again. deaf gods play their music. in small rooms. in tiny houses. far from heaven. tracing life through cracked windows. on paper made of sacrifice and condition.

i knew them.. or thought i did. chalk faces on the pavement. the tender science of trust. seams in the darkness. chasing ghosts. always more rain than sun. 

the little knives that chase. poets and lovers. the fierce punctuation that manages this madness. one touch at  a time.

she flaunts her colors. soft crayons spoil the book. the pictures draw her. in grey outlines. hard edges haunt the dead flowers.