Category: Writing

Æ waxes to the vintner.

Someone and someone

were down by the pond.

A berserker producing a glass of Norton wine that makes you want to shake the hand.

It is an Ibis’ vintage.

Breathe.

I have not heard you speak so.

Voice trembling and slightly rushing.

{Words between the lines}

Who did you envision as your audience¿: Æ wonder.

⊙

I remain Wittgenstein’s Mistress to the bibliophiles.

In the quadrangle, where others play chess,

where others play tennis,

where Æ square(ly) dance in strange ellipses, orbiting

the pieces and players,

our cads and minnesänger, wondering

Since when did “simple” imply “stupid”¿

⊙

And, minne-spæker,

it is because you bit and swallowed the Sardonios plant, that you convulse and laugh so strangely and hard. I have read it tastes bitter to the buds.

Is it so to the taste of your tongue¿

It has got you laughing so hard that the neighbors complain.

Sardonic giggling at the guilt of being worry=free,

at your shamelessly feeling restless when you have no desire to idle,

at the inability to enact due to your concern for being imperfect.

An ideal idyll.

⊙

An Arizonian dream of summer, intension of heat, arises within me,

even though, the ambient temperature is frigid, like desert (k)nights.

It radiates outward and into all which my skin contains.

And, I’m sweating heavy like summer.

Smelling for you.

Feeling beadlets bursting from the multitudes of singular pores in my face.

My visor and visage.

A strong craving for coffee consumes me.

in the

Blue House.

Now, I’m sitting here
hoping
this water will boil,

Three Smartass Hostess Hums

Can I make them laugh at themselves?

Instead of just me laughing at them or me howling silently at them, with a smile, as I eat shit?

Giggle. People act strange towards the staff of restaurants.

Especially when they feel decorous enough to go to a destination restaurant.

I host the front of house. Like it is one big dinner party and all the diners are my invited guests.

But, it is my dining room, punks.

⊙

HUM ONE

Two people are seated at table 9.

Seat 1 flags me over with an urgent come-hither wave.

How can I help?: I ask.

Yes. Is this all you have right now or are there other things available?: she says motioning to our lunch menu clutched between her paws, and held open.

I smile an I’m-sorry-to-disappoint smile.

Yes. There is another menu available. Unfortunately, it’s only available to our special guests, at this time.: I rib her.

She laughs.

⊙

HUM TWO

Two girls in their late teenage years wear way too much makeup for 9 a.m.

They try to order alcohol unsuccessfully.

As they finish their breakfast, I stop by to ask how everything was.

Fine, I guess: says seat two.

Would you like me to wrap your leftovers to take home?: I ask.

Are you gonna spit in them?: she asks.

I pause.

I lean in.

Do you want me to?: I ask too quietly, with a strange smile.

No. You can wrap it.: she responds with downcast eyes.

Her friend snorts.

⊙

HUM THREE

There are thirteen people total milling around the front of the restaurant,

on the list,

waiting for a table to become available.

Three tables leave at the same time.

One of those is the best table in the house.

I have the busser clean it first,

anticipating.

I do panto with the next table on the list.

We’re just about ready for you. Best table in the house opened up.: I chat.

Oh. Um, actually…see, we’re trouble makers. We were hoping for this table.: one says.

They motion to the newly vacated, worst table in the house. Right by the front door with its constant draft of frigid, rainy air. Loudest place in the joint, too.

Bemused they would turn down the window adjacent, water-overlooking table, I sincerely say: Oh, we like troublemakers here! No problem.

I bus, set the table, and seat them.

I’ll be back with water. Do you like ice?: I ask.

Actually, she will have a lukewarm water, with a quartered lemon. Not multiple smaller wedges. I would like freshly made coffee. Please throw out the pot and boil a fresh one. We’re known to send things back.: the man says.

Certainly: I say.

The coffee was just made and no restaurant slices lemons in quarters: I think.

His lady smiles: he meant to say we are high-maintenance.

I laugh: Thank you for the heads-up. Now, I won’t feel bad if I have to tell you ‘no’ in the future.

They both crack up.

I cut a lemon and prep his coffee.

I return to the front of the restaurant.

I tell the next table waiting: Your timing is impeccable; that table is yours.

I, again, motion to the best table in the house.

They nod and smile.

The high maintenance man steps over and interrupts.

I know we said ‘no’, but it’s hard to hear. Can we move to that table?: he asks.

Motioning to the table I’d previously offered him, the table he just heard me offer

to another party.

No.

: I, simply, say.

Æ smile with a pointed, closed mouth grin and

arched eyebrows.

Bad dog: I think.

He does not laugh.

Bite my honey.

Flower saying to bee, “bite my honey.“

A flower from a bouquet which served as centerpiece to a surprise, marriage proposal between two dinner guests, last night.

Table 21.

It was re-gifted to the little restaurant.

The lily stunned me when I saw it this morning upon arriving to host.

simple

Old Guard to new guard,

the Blackguard exchange.

The timing of a skipping phonograph’s needle.

The sound of a thick, braided, leather belt

str-

-etch-

-ing

across a gateful of extravagance.

A’poised atop a capstone.

Simple balance.

Æ as Vesta In-Skin.

The subtext of the Magnicat whispered to me, during

evening vespers.

“The Nerbudda River runs

seven hundred and thirty five miles,

towards and eventually into, the Arabian Sea,”

You appear vestal.

And, I feel myself becoming

Vesta who is often

, simultaneously

, Blodeuedd of the House of Dôn.

⊙

Magenta to yellow honeycomb energy frames my perceptivity.

I come as

I came,

octagon-ally.

And, I work my role.

Tending the hearth and protecting the flame within,

remaining wylde and seeming untamæble.

Small flowers of the temple work alongside.

Eagle at my right shoulder.

I show them my tool for starting pyres.

A frictionless=match.

A Wax Vesta is also a whirling dervish of

embedded cotton strands

strewn amongst a waxen stem and

tipped with a phosphorous head.

⊙

Hesperus is Phosphorus.

Phosphorus is Eosphorus.

And, Eos made them both.

We remind the othered that the Evening Star was determined to also

be the Morning Star.

⊙

The vexillum distinguishes the two troops serving under separate standards;

And, the blazon of

the web of a feather distinguishes each and every of us

as a vexillary.

A deadbeat heart.

Pounding.

⊙

Understand that returning to base

(camp)

; is not a setback

; it is not regressive

; it is not going backwards.

It is a cycle

seeking its own resumption

through completion.

⊙

A warrior struggling with perpetual reality.

So yammer

; and give ’em howl, yellow hammer.

A fluid ounce is a preponderance in candle’s magic light.

A meditation.

A drawing.

Makes me wonder how your childhood face

, smiling,

appeared.

⊙

Are we to heed that as a call?: asked the Name=less One.

All things feel as bindings abiding.

Perhaps, Præter=being is the natural state of affairs,

after all this free-fall.

And, maybe

, Judas was just some heckler in the crowd

at jesus’s stand=up comedy special.

Just do not knock the quiver

of the Archer’s arrows.

He is basic but deadly in the face of the clumsy.

Simple and simply fatal.

Go a’head and

miss=under=estimate his prowess

as has countless bison before you.

⊙

Find the hideous freedom to be exactly who you are.

Now.

The delicious self=noitcelfer that arises from the awareness of transparency.

Because, the windows of Looking=Glass House are two=way.

But, there will you find only sand

with no stones which may be thrown.

⊙

Where your perception of what is outside your skin

is actually the reception of the content presented

by that which is contained

by your in=skin.

A’bridged nuzzling.

The sun made like a runaway today.

Let me lay you on your back, bare.

Crawl up on you like a curious, hungry animal,

and occupy myself with sniffing your scent.

Smells of you.

Because, the smell of the skin below your wrist

is not the smell of the skin stretching over your ankles

is not the smell of the thumping skin above your jugular

nor that of the skin behind your ear.

It will not smell of the skin between your legs

which will not smell as does the stench of your armpit.

Or the smell of your open mouth.

And, my incessant humming

will become Sygyt.

The strangely drone of polyphonic overtone singing.

And once I’m done,

I would pad circles on you

, like a dog preparing to sleep

, of tossing and turning

, and

, wrapping round you.

For warm comfort.

Finding the right proper position of

a deep winter nuzzle.

Vision of the 36th Ellipsis.

Thirty five completed ellipses.

Comprising the matricies of now.

Begin compiling the thirty-sixth,

presently. Of today.

And, my eyes first narrow before going wide as the tableau reveals.

Speak to me mine sheep and mine mæstyre satyr.

No malice shalt invade my mind or sour myself,

yet, still can I sense your maleficent power

comingle.

Why do you howl thusly? And, do you know that

this has Æ heard before.

I want, too.

I want two.

I want to.

They have nothing if you less the faun

who dies thrice in triangular trinities

allowing

you to circumnavigate her through triangulation.

As drawing a five pointed star is not drawing a

six,

seven,

eight,

nine,

pointed one.

Quit your baying sheep for this shearing is not for you.

Æ, too, is a beastly, sacred dæmon,

sweetly contained in this gossamer and goosedown

Conspicuously unsuspicious.

Inauspicious.

I fear not your moment of judgement on this howliday. Thou shalt never judge me as harshly as

Æ have previously taken myself whilst in captivity.

Snarl, smile. Do you, now, see?

Why is ritual an honor to behold

?

You reply: because it should be so.

You could stop traffic dressed suchly.

Do you not know a pedestrian has paths to

right of way.

As I jaywalk onward,

across paths,

I find my head adorned with a sea holly wreath, in tribute to unknown;

see how its roots grew long and serpentine over æges ago

so that it may adorn without being torn

from the earth?

Unplucked.

Worn before; to be worn again.

I draw the force and send it mine in reply.

Starling a’wing, chasing behind me.

You awoke in a pond full of dead fish(,) talking.

And, only dead fish go with the tide.

Of the five streams pouring forth, sea-ward,

one unnaturally flows upstream to BayTown’s Strange-House.

The starling now a’lights on my left shoulder.

Worn as I wear the stow of the red dragon in early autumn.

A dance sought

That which transpires behind that which appears.

Captivating verging upon captive taking.

I’ve taught everyone No Thing.

I’ve told No Body everything.

Bones tapping.

Dropping skeletons to read the bones strewn,

recalling those cries from the crowded street.

Exuberance of the hysterical normalcy.

I dare you in this kindly sinuous challenge of tendons and ligaments.

A pale, dark-horse rides in, unbidden.

Flared nostrils from a face concealing a mirror of mind thinking:

If the dæmon would seek, Æ would ask a dance.

I’s as l’s

The lying face down on the bed,

before hearing

wrinkled hands on warm skin.

Soft.

Cranebuilding up.

Drawn downwards magnetic-ally

in the shade of magenta’s shadow.

I dreamt of the same drama that you did.

°

Yesterday’s sunset never occured.

The solar absence. A sick day.

A buzz-kill a’side a-bore.

The ocean laps and shifts against restless legs.

And, I’ve got nothing upsleeve and no

allies hidden downwind.

Just a few holes for perceiving, in my head.

A sternum pouting in slight protrusion below my breasts.

Perplexed for posterity, at the trivial causality and meaningless correlations.

So I make-up for you

this campy of collective nouns:

A coalescence of coral reefs;

A pert of pearls.

A cajolery of Tricksters.

A spread of betters and gamblers.

A quimper of quivers mixing with whimpers.

A dithering of doting.

°

Last night,

I felt that pulsing in my a gauche foot which precedes a muscle cramp.

I felt tied and tireder.

Wrestling with the dichotomy of physical inaction apposite the desire to action.

Beastly.

Scriven, scrivener, and a’scribe: I hear.

Aye: says Æ, whilst I nod.

I write my capital I’s the same as my lower case l’s

In my handwritten longform.

I do.

Æ does.

Aye.

Dreamt the Within from Without

I recall a big, yellow, American-style school bus,

in the middle of the desert.

I just arrived.

There are extraordinarily beautiful, tall, elegant people about, maybe fifteen total, leisurely milling. They have nothing pressing to which they attend.

I am alone and new, per se.

I am acutely aware of this.

I feel disapproval.

I receive an unfriendly welcome; this I derive from the expressions of the others as they take notice of me, for the first time.

A stunning, pale-skinned blonde approaches, motions to the school bus, and, with perfectly calculated ‘disinterest’ says:

They can teach you the ways of death.

As though this was that which I sought.

Of course, you’d need to talk to Kimberly first.: she says.

I say: Kimberly is actually my cousin. She is already dead.

I intuit this disarms her through surprise.

My immediate understanding and audacity to speak it to her face.

And, (no shit) I think: Nice try, you silly bitch. I wilt not fall for your maleficent insinuation. I am just barely pretty and charming enough, in a strangely colloquial way, to have made it to this place of your people. I know your resentment of my prescence leads you to seek my removal, but I am in no rush to die. I certainly will not seek my death at your subliminal request. You feel threatened by my uncultured, odd intelligence. There is no reason for this. I do not want to mess with the circles within which you run. I am no threat. If you were slightly less self-involved, you would perceive this and make me your ally.

I’m the proud-beauty of your worst night-mares.

I say to her mind, in mine silent stillness: Æ ain’t leaving on that short, yellow bus. You may try to trick this fool into it; but,

Æ see through this mirage you call an oasis.

She walks away.

I pull out my stakes, canvas tarp, and tenterhooks.

Pitching camp before the freezing night comes.

I come from the water: a voice of my head suddenly says.

(I briefly become lucid in the dream, before losing the thread.)

I recall: there are four, fundamental groups: Water, Earth, Sand, and, blood.

Æ am a blood, but no-one can tell, unless Æ tell them.

I had reached the Sand after arising from distant Water.

We all came from Earth, but I had not been there or seen them in ages.

And, as Æ am thinking these things, I feel an intensifying heat rising in both hands.

Fingers and palms burning in sensation, not flames.

I think: I have the power to raise intense heat from my hands. I can emit it into the world around me, perhaps as a weapon. I feel over-confident.

I examine the feeling more closely.

I discover that Æ am not radiating the heat from within myself.

Heat is being emitted from an invisible sphere outside myself.

The orb is somehowl held in place between my palms, as if strung upon a string.

Like a diabolo.

I reach this revelation after experimenting. Moving my hands closer together/farther apart. Noting small changes in nerve sensitivity.

What I first thought was coming from my Within to the Outwards is actually being generated from the Outward and perceived and wielded by mine Within.

Feathers of eyelashes

Even in dreams, I remain yours.

I have come for none other.

The smell of chai spice pours skyward from the pot of boiling water.

Vapour blessing the room like sage humbly burned.

Pealing recalling things and those missed.

Blushing cheeks and bitten lip.

°

I have seen the city skies from on high; they light up like an introspective brain’s neural network.

Psst. Wake up.

Pushing my nose deeply into your neck,

to inhale; get your smell.

I wish to entwine the two;

Make the aroma of chai ever tied to the scent of you.

I remind myself to not forget this, mine intent,

whilst batting this piece of your thin skin with

the feathers of my eyelashes.

rock skipping

A rock skips on its toes’ tips

across Looking-Glass Lake.

It is true that what you do not know can hurt you;

and, in doing so, cause you pain you do not rightly sensate.

You just know it hurts.

Onkwehónwe {ref. Kanyen’keha}.

°

And, the phrase, “nobody cares” set the captives free and captivated the enslavers.

°

Your apophasis disinclines my disposition towards you.

“That would be my preference,” says B., the scrivner.

So. Let him. He simply wishes to copy the original documents into his longhand.

°

Pedantic pandering over over-excitabilty.

A knockout; A decision; A draw.

°

You’re not like most people.

You’re right. I’m only one person, not the multiples comprising most. Extraneously speaking, I distrust the correlations derived from “most people” statistics. They never draw from a supple, sufficient, sample population.

°

Elevate your base

because

despite not proud,

you can remain unashamed.

Æ ramble.

Impatiently spinning my pen, furiously fast yet without any malice,

up and down.

Up

&

Down.

Dropping it like the mic after I just spat the hottest sixteen of my life.

Verbalizing subtext.

Indicating that

proper etiquette and charm can be a real turn off.

⊙

The desire to find you through this slow unmasking.

That day I saw a woman,

with a faun’s head,

wilt her own beheading,

after a chalice of wine drunk.

A phone call missed. A phonemic misstep.

Grey skies with snowy smatterings.

A knitted, houndstooth stow dragged across frozen over tar.

⊙

And my pen runs smoothly.

Yet, sometimes when I reach for it,

I surprise myself because

I did not realize Æ wanted to say something.

And sometimes, all the words Æ scriven mean nothing.

The act, not the result, is mine interminable goal.

Purposefully inexorable.

An indiscernible mumble of voices slipping through my open window and into my ears,

bringing a start, shudder, and frown.

⊙

Let me read aloud to you.

Anything you wish.

Anything to get

my mind-reading.

Like a hot bath.

Like that sudden ringing in my left ear.

Fleeting.

⊙

And, the day I saw the faun-headed woman beheaded,

I first saw her rip off her own smiling face.

Terrified as the blood spurted and the exposed muscles tore, I witnessed her dancing in the splatter like it was a lawn sprinkler in July’s middle.

⊙

We shall all hit a point of no return. A matter of when not what-if.

The Magister threw himself into the water willingly.

Seeking to fade away before Telgarius’ son.

To turn the wheel with intent, seeing his position no longer rested on the axle’s center, but now stretched across

a spoke.

Not to let the wheel turn him.

⊙

But, one man found that,

beneath the wheel

, there is a twirling reel to reel,

spinning cassette tape string

, a’strung between two spools turning.

The turning of the screw.

The taming of the shrew.

The typing pool of the monkey troop producing works enacted by Shakespearen troupes.

The evolution of concealed ovulation.

Wrestling into surrendered submission.

⊙

Phonemic smelting of a howl of words written.

Wordsmithing.

Locksmith and the kNight witch seeking the subliminal through the automatic.

Æ break mine own heart as much as I crack myself up.

The magic of shuffling cards before lightning a prepared candle.

What is this thread of outer consciousness that draws my sweet pout?

Poliphilio?

Marco polo?

What draws forth this expression my face makes for

only kNow-One?

⊙

What do you do with a strange bird that realizes itself to be a strange bird?

Call it The Ibis.

Decorously held in place by duct tape.

Gorilla’s glue. Chest beating and vine swinging.

Cheap giggles and swollen, turkey belly laughs.

Dreamt of déjà vu .

I saw it while dreaming of the restaurant.

Seating parties of varying sizes to tables;

Assembling a dynamic loop of a jigsaw puzzle.

Chess like square-dancing.

Moving quickly whilst not appearing to hurry.

⊙

A skeletal, thin, blonde woman wears a strange stow made of scraps of many types of fabrics.

When she stands and puts her hands on her hips,

the effect is she appears like a plush, red heart.

When she appears as such,

those I’m seating, I seat without menus.

They are different and seem to be unperceived by the menued others.

⊙

A menuless and short but muscular man, fiftyish perhaps,

looks at me,

as my stride slides alongside

his seat at a table for two.

He leans his neck back slowly as I approach.

I stretch my torso forward and past my legs;

{anticipatory}

I crane my neck.

I watch his head twist a dramatic 90° as I find myself directly aside him.

I am mid stride and passing him by

and, somehow when he parts his licked lips, I find my mouth upon his,

four eyes smiling like two idiots.

A fast pair of deep kisses.

I withdraw, not missing a step.

I am shocked at how seamlessly and seemingly naturally, I warmly dropped my professionalism.

I intuit any other diner or employee perceptive enough to have noticed this exchange, would have found themselves smiling.

I am stunned at the strange pride felt at

his bidding my kiss so publically, innocently, and nonchalantly.

And, within this very non-lucid dream,

I felt dream jà vu.

I’d not met him before; but I

knew him still.

A limbering

The shadows in the room grew.

Dipping the length of my leg into this newly found darkness,

like a penknife pushing it.

Stretching and testing.

And, I do not smile because I do not want to, despite feeling quite well and glad.

{in spite of bronchitis}

In my space, for the moment, there is simply, only No-One here to signal, unconsciously, with subconscious microexpressions.

My face enjoys

this fleeting freedom from observation.

My ears need not hear.

My eyes need not look.

My nostrils will choose when they wish to smell.

There is no thing I wish to taste or touch outside of my skin

right, exactly, now.

Just my own internal limbering.

So, I shift my body slowly to the rhythm generating; and,

feel my muscles begin to give.

I feel my inside/s.

It feels good and well warm/ed.

Hands raise above my head.

Breathing, not breathing.

(Resumption)

(Concession)

My heart keeps on beating.

And, my movements mirror

myself imagining me

as the serpent coiling ’round the Caduceus staff.

The toes of my dexterous foot, the finality of my snaking tail.

Inhale.

The fingers of my a gauche hand,

the small extremity of my fanged head.

Spiraling, in place.

My neck pops loose whilst

stalling in the suit of wands

and a decade of venom releases from muscle memories long forgotten.

I drain the venom out of my feet.

Exhale.

I raise the newly freed energy into my fangs.

I suddenly recall:

When playing a kazoo,

remember,

to hum;

don’t blow or you’ll

tear the wax paper.

The Undercutters: Chapter One- Why Effie lost her job.

Prologue

Introduction

“She was always such a sweet girl, but she just lost her shit,” bar patron 1 says, at 9:00 a.m., to the responding P.D. officer.

He continues, for the benefit of the record, “No, I wouldn’t say she was provoked; but, the old woman she was trying to seat was being a real bitch. They walked to three different tables; and, more and more people kept accumulating at the door; and, when that old biddy said ‘no’ to the third table she offered her, she just…”

“She just lost it!” interjects the diner at table 14.

“Yeah! Her face went all cartoony. Like in those old(e) Warner Bros. cartoons, when you realize the sheep is actually a well-dressed wolf in sheep’s clothing. Like, all pretty smiles and dimples until…,” bar patron two adds.

“Exactly like that. Then she just reared back and clocked that poor, elderly woman square in her jaw. I mean, she coulda easily been 70 years old.” says the indignant wife of afore mentioned diner at table 14.

“Right?! And, that lady just slugged her. It was fucked up!!” the thirteen year old kid to her right nods, grinning wildly.

“Justin!” the wife chastises to her oblivious son.

Justin continues, “Yeah, and that old lady dropped like a fly hitting a bug zapper. Zzzzppp!!!” he illustrates.

“Justin!!” Mom responds.

The P.D. officer asks the group-at-large, “Then what happened?”

The group-at-large goes silent.

Finally, Justin elaborates as the others nod in strangely silent agreement, “Everyone and everything went all silent for forever. Until. Until, the host lady started laughing all hysterically and real loud.”

“That’s right, Just,” says mom, patting his shoulder.

exchange

I say: you seem like the kind of guy who, if famous, would make his address public to encourage trespassers who could then be legally shot on site/sight.

He laughs: that could be my remake of The Most Dangerous Game.

I say: when you say “don’t tread on me,” I hear, “don’t tease me, I’m sensitive.”

I’m no bully.

Consider: Lordosis behavior and (bow)ties as the doses being titrated according to the response.

High heels were originally designed for men riding steeds. Heels hold stirrups, see. Push your heels down to get a proper seat in the saddle.

Today, the cost of the high heel is in its signal communicating desire. Done so with a bit of nonchalance.

It creates a slight spinal arch indicating receptivity.

Consider a (bow/neck) tie again.

You can get choked out easily, if the knot is grasped and twisted.

I cannot effectively run away, quickly, in heels.

Subliminal symbiotic signaling of an exchange.

A Fitt

I remember. A lot. Retention is knee jerk and not conscious.

Souls wrought like iron.

Hide in your cave until the light returns and you forgive yourself the impatience winter demand as its dues.

You mean the idea of accepting that you won’t want to accept the truth?

Breathe.

Now stop and fear me. Very good, beast.

I love the lapping crests of waves on shore like tongue on my cunt.

But, this desert of diurnal dehydration

recalls howl we do not drink water whilst sleeping,

though dreaming allegedly burns as many calories as wakefulness.

I am the power of your dreams and the incapacitation

of your night-mares.

Horseapples are not so delicious as horseradish

And mushrooms taste of warm, spilt semen.

And this perpetual goal of ascertaining the unobtainable makes me corrigibly incorrigible.

Contained to overflowing.

Delicious duplicity of discomfort.

And every shudder forces the air out and through my diaphram,

and, I feel my ribs struggle against constriction.

I can count them inside myself, through the agency of this binding,

Just as you could now count them with your fingertips.

Opening my dictionary

Charismatic people carry much telluric gravity.

Those working on their feet do not need to join a gym.

It’s that simple?!: he asks incredulously.

Neither of us are simple, but

we are both, rather, basic.: I reply

What is the difference between transcribing and transcryption?: he asks

I don’t know.: I say.

Huh, me neither.

⊙

Your eyes are hard and wild.: he tells me.

I know.: I tell him.

And it turns me on when you aptly identify an argument as inane.: I add

Blahblahblah: he giggles in response.

Filthlessly ought to be an adjective because it describes the subject ‘you’.: I say

It is a word.: he responds, opening my dictionary.

Moving Smells.

I think I feel you rest your hand on my knee.

The neighbor makes breakfast for her dinner;

and, my flat smells like the last time I was in your home and you made toast.

Heyoka thinks of Tulpa.

Æ whispers: I miss him, too.

⊙

The previous tenant left crystals on the sill of each window and a geode in the cabinet under the sink, along with strange, laminated sheets of paper bearing strings of seemingly arbitrary numbers and strange affirmations written in broken, American English.

I choose to not disturb the relics.

The clock on the stove is incorrect;

yet, it reads 11:11 the moment after I sign the final leaf of a new lease, the landlord leaves, and I find myself alone in this new space of mine.

I walk to buy lightbulbs.

I pass a dog carrying the leash in its own mouth.

⊙

And, I feel, simultaneously, not old enough yet too old to please you.

And, though the sun returned this morning, it cannot warm the air.

And, I suddenly feel like a silly girl because I never get cold.

⊙

My heater is off.

My windows are open.

The overhead, bedroom fan spins.

Stirring the air.

Swirling the vapour of my exhalations.

I loathe sucking my own exhaust fumes.

An unuttered question yells at me as “the old man upstairs” rambles about and creaks my ceiling, his floor.

I begin fidgeting with my fingers after setting down my pen.

⊙

My orchid’s blooms burst open, pridefully, last night.

Two bulbs remain,

still and clasped tight,

with a promise of what is to come.