dusty records drowning in this low lamplight / my deep voice my sharp shoulder bones my trembling palm lines / everything written down hard and black and no one learns how to read / all fog and hideous wild gardens / and so what do I do now / my helpless little pulse / humming still / I never knew another kind of glory / will you send lilacs to my door? / forty three calendar pages until the end of nearly everything but eighty until I hold my V. / send me silence-enduring instruction books too / please / even the night was made to be loved until the end, they say

don’t think I have a body anymore but a house of cards, will find anything a good reason to crumble, henceforth. there are late violets blooming on my legs, ashes in my inner pocket from a cigarette I refused to forget. one of those that go on burning forever.

missing V. often feels like post-apple sticky hands, loud coughing or bad thin coffee, I don’t know, ‘wish I could be with you right now, somewhere, and we could make the
world real again’, and until then someone should hand us both balancing poles for tightrope walking.