scrape, he scrapes. he sits in his chair and scrapes one nail along the arm. the arm of the chair, wood shavings on his thigh, on the floor. everyone once in awhile, he gets his bearings, grips his hands, pushes off and up. he steadies himself, shuffles about. he makes it to the bathroom, the faucet leaks, a trace of rust circles the drain. he pisses, it hurts, he shakes it at the end.
we all shake at the end. we all grimace and bite the insides of our mouths. he still has good molars back there, where he chews it up and swallows because there isn’t enough spit left.

the beauty of everything lies in simplicity: even the most complex structures are made up of smaller, finer things. the way she parts her hair, the way the boy tilts his foot, the way the girl sighs. the intricacy and force of a kiss, the depth and promise of fingers entwined beneath a bed sheet. the way your daughter laughs when you tickle her, the squeal of your son as you scoop him up from the floor, the way she breathes as you undress her. the simple things, a spot of light in the dark, a beacon to return home.

do i arrive too quickly? do i come and go too easily? am i difficult? am i difficult to please? she stands before me, whip in hand. how remarkable. so easy, as if she was meant for this. but i do not want to be whipped, i want to break, i want to be shattered. she presses her body onto mine, runs her fingers in my hair. you are loved, she tells me, rubs herself even harder against me. am i? i whisper, am i here to be loved?

dreams of infinite sadness, i cough bleeding. three shot, perched amongst ruins, a tombstone slanted from the mud. i do this to relieve the pressure of your mouth. and she was scarred from head to toe. broken twigs lined the driveway and the spigot was afoul. i had heard of this, of winds tearing into houses and stealing wills. and she was talking from all places all at once. amok and cindered, christmas trees wrapped tightly into nuances. we can only keep nothing. and i breathe moss, i breathe mold.

Mysteries and puzzles. She says to me, you’ll never figure this out. And I dig my nails deep into her thigh, deep into her back, through gritted teeth I reply, you never wanted to be figured, you only wanted to be blindly adored.

i steam through the night, angered and restless and bored with no where to vent, no safe place to let it go. i hunger and crack and feel uncontrollably spoiled and privileged. she comes to me in the night, children asleep, exhausted and lonely. i’ve missed you, she says.
i miss everyone.

multitask multi-be, be everywhere, all the time, stretch across your lovely claws through time and space and the small of her back and the edge of her lip, snag a nail there, pull her mouth towards yours, just before piercing the skin, just before bleeding, let go and kiss her, kiss the wound before it heals.

hang time, the suspension of belief, that one crucial moment where we wait with baited breath and our lungs fill to capacity and it would be a marvel that we were still breathing if the nail wasn’t set to puncture us all.
hang time, the noose around her neck, while we wait for the trap door to drop and for her to kick at us and we toss stones against her forehead and her torso and her knees, scratched and bruised and scabbed with every lie.
hang time, where calloused fingers loosen their grip and i fall forever and ever into the mouth of this disappointment, having said it and done, over and over until raw, until my throat is hoarse from screaming your name.
hang time, all over again until it is over.

“whatever will be willed of me”
-tool, “lateralus”
throughout and through, thrown out and pitched, the wave and the tide and the undertow, relax, let go, she said, let it go, she said, she kissed me hard on the mouth and my teeth hurt, my gums bled and i tasted her as a mixture of blood and rage and the longing of every man that crossed her, of every longing i ever had that was denied and i felt nothing but the drowning even though i knew the shore was near, even though i knew the sun was above me, even though i knew which direction to go, i felt nothing, i felt peace, i felt happy as nothing at all.