everything on my right is on your left,

everything below me, above you.

the wind rustles, no, rattles, no,

raps its withered and veiny hand

on the glass. I sway, regal, to

and fro, with such cool loftiness I can’t feel.

 

the early chill extracts a feel-

ing of guilt, regret, a shrinking back, left

alone kind of feeling. icy, too.

like a frozen pond, its surface rigid for you,

fickle elsewhere, roiling in the deep by the hand

of some entity unbeknownst to me. or maybe it’s mine, i dunno.

 

a shift. a thawing. now I’ve got no

chilly nose for you to melt. Feel

the liquid heat creep back into my hands!

an angry abrasion on the left

thumb, concealed just for you.

wait ‘til you find out there are two.

 

a muted mauve now, it too

shall fade into obscurity, leaving no

scar or blemish. will you

do the same? will this feel-

ing last forever? if it left,

would i remain true? Hand

 

me those two-faced reins! Hand

me a new kind of chains. to

be unbridled is not the only thing left

for me, nor is it my essence. looming, no

future within these walls, It feels

insurmountable. as do you.

 

so much swirling within your chest, you

squat in the tub under the hail of droplets, hands

trailing over the dewy floor, you feel

at once numbly scalded, then battered to

no end by a permeating chill. but it does not

reach the ever-burning core. That is all you have left.

 

six days of feeling - snatched up, abstracted, delivered to you

compacted. left pure and unrefined by any retrospective hand,

encompassing far too much for you or me to know or understand.