the handsome fox must eat with fiercer jaws than ours.

I can only tell you that our present life is made up of the sneaky streaks of fading sun coming through the windows. Smudgy drying lemon with no velocity, just a passive glance of used spectrum skittering across the oriental runner.

We have these pilly green particles of blanket that wedge themselves everywhere. I’ve got some food wedged in where my wise teeth once howled: “You know better” (they’d gripe, unheard but felt, when too many drinks drowned their nerves; making my teeth saddle up and black out).

Our present has this pleading tone to it. (Like) there’s some persuasion in the mixed bag of conversation- As if our feet were going to walk across a beach or through a museum at any given moment. Our heels (rough)hide from polished textures and the grainy surface of a Long Island planet. “You’re supposed to take your socks off before you get into bed.”

I feel dissembled. I am able to put myself back together regularly, not carefully. When I am sitting still— exposed receptor before some moody clot of sky or some angry jut of pavement, I am sure I am not just whole/undone. I am not a work in progress. I am existing, I feel that.

I am dying a little faster because I can hear my heartbeat slowly counting down. I am something not entirely real to myself, and I am not special. I can not tell if these feelings are to mend myself, relationships with others, affirm the energy that keeps slipping away (like losing light, like gaining weight).

Our mass is one of fast forward stars and

I’ve read about them ending

but when I look up they beam back burning-

I know I’ll die before I see them snuffed.

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