the need to talk

follow me. even when I have nowhere to lead, nothing to say. walk with me a ways. climb this insanity, weaving the cloth as we do. collect on the damages with your silken touch. collect it all.

your mind, tumbling along the smooth edge of the emory board. you’re talking too fast, faster than the camera can catch. words like dragonfly wings. stuttering in code. a sweet sugary blanket, covering me.

there’s a building full of sores. walls covered in band aids. call it home. maybe even give 10% of everything. manage me. call me broken open. label me with a new book of diagnostic suffering. sap from the walls, nature’s kidneys.

when they were seated, her legs crossed, then uncrossed, dragged along the seat. the sound is separation. pulling the sections of an orange apart. amplified. low sounds of micro gasping. when they stood again she leaned in, his sickness shared.

measure your blessings against the cold bare stairs. one inch maybe three. measure the daybreak against a spelling. beautiful as the day you held her in one arm stretched. beautiful like aspiration, there in the brackish spoils of a bird bath running over. what eyes you have now. what eyes.

art credit: Pour me Water, Pure Water I, 2020 photo by Dafe Oboro