I can shape myself perfectly into the hum of
florescent lights. I can sit so still the minutes part
dark and slow and deep through me like a small
animal’s scream vibrates all night long through a
blue spruce. I can press my body down into the
space where I don’t know anything but the deadly
weight of all my imagined doom. And there, at the
bottom of the world, living creatures spin and
splinter and fight. They walk with their eyes shut
and see with their fingers. They stick their hands
into sewers and caverns and slip in the moon. They
thrive in shadow. They contort into its pale blue
frailty. They muscle themselves into nothing but
silver and silence – windblown and cloud like. They
laugh. They laugh and laugh and laugh at my daily
rituals of resistance. At my inability to see further
than only a couple inches. At my rigid, embittered
carefulness. They laugh at a world that has me in
its grip like a gangly girl. Small, easy to forget a sad-
boned thing. And I am retreating into my sadness
like a tiny particle of dust cries downward into a
ditch. What should I do with my hands? I am not a
wise traveler. Please teach me, simple creatures,
what to do with my available body. Bring your war
against my present complaints. Every sorry edged
thought, put its tiny scull in your pocket. Carve out
a truer, purer God from my permeant defeat. Make
me so fierce and bright in all my injuries. I can’t
think of anything else I could want that could be so
important.