Simply put, this is it. You are the metronome at which I pull off my greatest stunts. The sandpaper skin that so effortlessly bleaches me time and again and. A phoenix is a breath that I swallow. I shall not shall not speak shall not shall silence myself for fear of. Heimlich, under the ribs. You rip apart the circus to find me in the lion’s mouth, my doughy head waiting with the burnt down candle. I say: I have cold limbs, there is a frost in me. Time and again and. Find me locked in the cupboard, picturing your figure in the darkness. Picture me the pendulum swinging, soggy with a magpie desire, pecking at you through the crack in the wall. I say: it’s like chasing it all away only to find it’s your own tail.

Simply put, this is the first time. I am maddening in the dark, somewhere between what I have known and the thick ink strokes of your bloated bellies, the equivalent of pickled foetuses. I don’t know the force of your sleeping elbow, or how the Dutch sunflowers rotund with confidence feel in my hand, but I am willing to search these things out. I am sunk on the pavement, counting birds, drawing numbers, pulling at my voice as if it is a tough weed. You are leaning, taking in the atmosphere like a shadow, pulling your hat down over, what you later call, newly born eyes, as I expand like the belly of a frog.

Simply put, that was the first of many. You are red wine, you are “everything has punctuation, here.” You are like the olden days. When I talk about you, there is a note of nostalgia. I could swear it’s raining. Like buckets. Cartoon rain clouds. I say: we are sacks of flour, knees bent, arms stretched. Six million tons of steel rotated fast enough and a stomach of magma. Simply put, this is it.