If I didn’t know the words molten and crag
how could I refer to the world beyond my line of sight?
Breadcrumbs and visions fall from my chapped lips:
great buildings leaning against one another for support,
lakes draining, flaming comets crisscrossing smoke trails above,
dinosaurs returning just as the first stars note their absence.
Another day greeting my neighbors at the mailbox
with my eyelids sewn tight, every envelope addressed to the current resident,
but I reside nowhere. Not in dog cry,
not bird flap, or between, or
between the spaces between,
or in the letters, much as I try to frame myself.

The hallway hangs its own mirrors while I sleep,
replaces carefully selected secondhand paintings
of daisies, I thought, and cats in picnic baskets
in repose, perhaps marmalade dappled,
or was it marmite? The walls see me through golden
curlicues whose filigree jags obsidian peaks
at the flick of a switch under someone else’s finger.
Touch here. That’s the spiderbite softened wound,
latticed by reddened flesh. Pity every open sore and empty stomach.

Today I hear the wind chanting new orders;
tomorrow I’ll gouge out my ears and pace the breezeway.