Judging the Flame with Damp Palms

Begin with an outline and slowly fill it.

No. I said. Guts first. Then add the skin.

We were both wrong.

You start with nothing. And you're never finished.

The paper bites my fingers as I draw the map of its new veins. Prying out every valve. Breaking every thread. Deconstructing every domino. Undoing each chain. But the shadows are always there. From where the towers stood.

Waiting to fall.

To be wrong as well as I can. To start with nothing. And to never be finished. Ugly as the last words we ever spoke to each other. Dark stairs in my empty hands catching the back of his walk. In down. In the freedom that is loss. Folding the dagger into the wound it has found, but didnlt start. Where the limp in my speech finally snags your thoughts.

We are there for the first time. And the last.

Build the frame. Then sober it in.

No. Gather the meat. And give it back to its flesh. Different phases of the skeleton. Finding its shape. Different profiles in the vanity's mirror digging. Digging their graves. As if it matters where we bury what is dead.

We were wrong.

Again.