touch

I couldn’t say what I miss the most, now that missing is mostly all I am. The failures of the flesh, the drift of the dream. The expenditures of lips to lick and rocks to kick, the drag and drift of smoke and sky as the coyotes and stars close in. Currently my hands are gloves and my fingers largely unfeeling, beneath a standing count of snakes and offal, symbols that I haven’t eyes enough to see. The years speed away, treading water by changing tense, the tongue becomes a heavy toll. Everyone now many worlds away as I shrink into carcass and collateral, fed whole into the maw of the intangible.

The explanations remain inexplicable, a stack of givens as kindling for the ramblings of language, inherent imperatives blazing away through the bones of beast. The dull daily diet of heart hollowing horror, hope a caterpillar paralyzed with potential devils devouring it from within, the tide of blood and bedlam thundering through the banalities. Teeth and knives assail the drudgery of identity, vertiginous limbs and the forever fall in the feels. I shuffle a stack of cultivated distractions, the very soul of disaffection. Every surface livid with a smudge of thumbs.

There are distances that are unbridgeable, finalities and formalities and engines perpetually idling just outside. There are words weighted with wishes, words spent as spit and breath, thoughts and prayers thought experiment bears. You walk along with open wounds— the ones you loved and lost, the loves that up and left you, the damage accumulated by the vessel on its voyages by the usual goons and perpetrators. The hallowed empties out, candles and kindling and localized tropes. Another touch starved stranger stretched out like a shadow, vivid flashes in mirrors and echoes, missing you like it was the point.