There is so much color. So much disorientation (the walk out of a saturday matinee). So much crystalline preservation, remodeled phrases, premeditated holding–so many spontaneous shifts and subtle nuances. So much doubt and so much security–the paradoxical vulnerability and simultaenous strength.

Impossible to see objectively: water is suddenly brighter, words suddenly more heavy (tactile and olfactory now–with layers behind layers–is nothing superficial?). The multiplication of laughter. Ordinary things are suddenly beautiful. Doubts birthed and slaughtered in a matter of minutes. This indescribable paradise that runs alongside this perilous edge.

who am I but the withered stem or forgotten root or the deft pencil scratching (to the throat or the purple vein or the blood that coagulates in the well of your achilles’ blister).

who am I but the frost on a windowsill, gathering in the flux of minutes and the pubescence of autumn and the scratching sound of wind on wood. mitigating silence, in the lunar room of prehistoric demolition.

who am I but the two eyes that watch and feel and taste. the tin roof rusted over with orange pockmarks, spreading outward from their centers of speckled red. the metallic fire.

I know not or think not but feel much more than the articulate language can articulate.

I know things you forget in the separated colors of light: the spectroscope that we aim at fluorescence, one eye winked shut, the other open, looking for the thin striped rainbow.

who, but the crystallized voice, frozen in the instance that was never there. the instance that regenerates itself in the death of a cell or the birth of an eyelash or the memory of a forgotten boy.

the simple crux, the kaleidoscope that takes a thing and multiplies it and reflects it shape until there is that bright variegated, angular, and confusing set of shapes that are the same and different all at once.

a pattern repeats itself to never be repeated agian.

who, but myself. on this night. at this hour. in this moment of time.