distance (part thirty-nine)

We're young and our skins are tight,
so tight, across our skulls, taut clay,
that shadows start taking the finest Exacto blades
and tracing the soaked-in plum juice under our eyes
and scoring the places where the maps wrinkle and fold near our mouths
our mouths moths
fluttering to the light
light light light

Open your chest and swallow me;
I'm a reptile in need of a nest
becoming a colorless chameleon

The doors that lead from the station to the pawing, whinnying taxi cabs have musical hinges:
I hear a two-note chord on a violin,
followed by an ascending arpeggio,
to no more than second position on the E

'If you see something, say something.
Hopefully it's nothing.'
I see your voice growling into my neck.
I see the beard you might be able to grow, give it a year.
I see your shoulders, your impeccable jawline.
I see things that may never be,
and I tell you by asking if you've seen the movies currently playing in theaters.
'Hopefully it's nothing.'

There was a time when I'd be afraid of something.
I am saved I am safe I don't need rescue

Arms like a turnstall

'Hopefully it's nothing.'

-Dana Winter