Measuring the Step

I slept until noon and still hadn't slept enough. I wedged myself deep into the pillows and pondered how large the room had become. Little epiphanies in clothes that don't fit. Bits of her undressing. For long naps. Big chunks still searching. For all the skin the window took.

Distorted checkerboards. Pace their vagrant chips. Like toes on his penis. Little pigs with their snouts to the engine. Squealing.

I slept wherever the sun wasn't. Because it never comes here anymore. I dreamed of tilting doorways. And the hammers I used to prop them up. The collapse made sense. That I should hold up the roof. While the walls came in.

She is not the same. Counting. Metrics and reason. Offer her their seat. As the rain pelts the windows. As the leaves promise not to fall.

The dead speak. In temperamental riddles. The cadavers laugh. Again. When I can't remember their names.

Everything is so close. But I am so far from everything.