There is much to say that’s unsayable because my tongue has been cut down with grief. There’s so much left to do that’s undoable because my limbs have been rendered numb. The nightmares mean everything and nothing, they continue as they’ve always done and I live it like I’ve always done, these two lives of mine.

I can’t breathe most days because my time has always been borrowed and I’m reaching into minutes I don’t own and can’t have. I see this life drifting sideways and I know it isn’t really mine, has never really been mine. Some graceful mistake has delivered me to this place and any moment now it dissolves into an acid bath of empty wishes.

I’ve lost so many living houses full of ghosts. I’ve married them and released them into the nebula where they always belonged and mourned the silence they left behind. I chased shadows until flooded with the high-beams of souls larger than myself and, frozen, gave myself up to the cold lights.

I’ve knelt on Masada and felt the sting of ancient bees where the spirit meets hot dust and thin hope. The heat makes the thinnest proclamations of love and throws you to the mat of truth faster than flood. High up where the air is thin you can’t catch your breath for love or money, you learn to crawl close to the ancient mosaics until you collapse into the sleep of the damned.

My bones are torched clay. My call is cracked and heavy, but you can hear me in your reflection if your heart is open and your soul sits perfectly still. When we’re alone in this silence I swallow your heartbeat like air and my desperate hold on this body extends beyond light.