[[ you made the o deliberately just like the o in coward but you circled it around and around and around like you were trying to circumscribe him like you wanted to define him because anything that had borders meant it was finite and you could memorize all of him beneath your fingers you didnt want royalty this time you didnt want polish in the peak of your vicissitude your polar thoughts you wanted to erase it but you left it just like that ]]
and you're looking at you in a shitty frame drawn in expensive black lipstick. it's not your face. you sigh, then breathe, then sigh again, then sigh closer to the mirror, then sigh an inch away. the mirror fogs and your face fades to boring swatches of pale beige and black. it looks more familiar this way.
you write in the fog with your finger until words sharpen before they fade away. you know what you're writing. you can't remember reading it but you know it. you can recite it without fear of fault.
[[ the o like two great parentheticals conjoined around a peerless face ]]
so you wrote in that yawning deep. that abstraction of opacity made clarion by your touch.
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
the letters faded. vanished in the still air. the sound of your breath in the silent bathroom feels a little too loud, a little too noticeable but you push the thought away as you exhale against the glass again. and there they are, the words exactly as written, like some childish secret code for a sometimes-loved lover.
but it deserves a before and an after. it's an adjective in the air, an act caught in the act like an action shot of an athlete that was ripped from his context and retrofitted for the shallow intentions of cyberspace. you know better, so do better.
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
you have your before. now your after, spoken around a subject better left pristine and untouched. unsullied by fingers that weren't quite yours. fingers better suited for the long black talons of carrion birds digging for marrow in a rotten carcass.
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
feeling like you've had enough of your own reflection, you slide down off the vanity and push away from it (push your thoughts away). this was just another way to kill the minutes, anyway.
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