little red lines

The firepit left in the middle of 1st street is dying and you are eating salad. No one can eat the leaves without feeling them slap their chin, and there. That is universal. You are somehow fancy by wearing the same thing everyday, by gazing up at billboards and requesting them. Eyes. That’s sort of all it takes. The upper triangle of face, cornered at the end of eyes and bottom of the nose. What is making me dumber? I’ve tried prurience, I’ve tried quitting. I’ve tried sticking to lamplight, heeding the advice of my mother, and I’ve tried ignoring my mother entirely. What sticks is knowing everything will be hammered if it's improperly measured. That things break before they’re touched. Lies relive themselves over and over, and she wants me to track the lie at the end of the arch. Impossible. How dare you request anything of me after your hand was stiff in mine. Some people want to travel and some people want me to travel. I’ll travel. I’ll scare you too. I used to have premonitions of our reunion being one of great motion. Legs would swing in air and hair would swing like legs. Now I imagine the awkward after and the unimaginable silence of the train ride home from the island of “happenstance” into the borough of “circumstance.” I’ll stand frozen but you will know I was in motion before and will be after now. We stand around the firepit in the middle of city summer and it’s hotter than equator flame. I try and it handles me all the way to a tiger lily in the dark. It is hotter yet. It can get hotter.