your being 
holds centuries 
like the eternal 
flame of a 
mortuary’s candle 
a flicker, an aura, to which 
i will never know, yet you reach your golden, 
thin-spun, silk fingertips like the glare of a star out to 
me, wanting, i feel that if we truly did touch i may break 
apart the idea of you or i may get lost in a world that was 
all too real for you, i do not know who you are, if you are 
one, if you are many, if you once were, or if you are longing 
to eventually be, you have crossed this air that holds me 
prisoner, this enclosure that only the throbbing of my 
heart has consented to, yet you know much more than i 
i haven’t the slightest idea if the quiet laughter, 
sobs, songs, in the pollen-spiced air are 
yours, if you cry for yourself, for me, 
for an end you know will change your 
beginning, perhaps when i see those 
two bright lights, hear the agonized scream  
of my metronome, smell the moan of rubber i will be 
with you and we can cry to our reflections together, 
i wonder if that shallow creek that i would explore as a 
child looks any different to you, if that fabled tomb stone 
on the way to those gentle, corpse-cold waters scares you or
makes you feel like you are so much more of an existence 
now then ever before, do you exist more than i, is your 
relevance to this world all i needed to know within 
the stories i was read as a child, the ones with the 
impossible tall-tales, the little letters, the cigarette-soaked 
pages, were you what i saw when my fever painted faces 
within my hanging closet clothes, the body standing 
with an arm that fit perfectly in my jacket sleeve, 
that time i fell so ill that i nearly had to be hospitalized, 
the doll i smacked off the table at the witch’s hour of the 
night because i swore in my sickened stupor that it was 
moving closer to me, or are you why i did not die that day 
the time when i was so tiny in my father’s large hands, 
i could not breathe and fell limp as my mother’s dish 
rag in his embrace, do you not want me to be with you, 
no, not quite yet, for when i heard you jiggle my bedroom 
door-knob, fake, golden paint chipping, that morning i hid 
in my bed blankets for at least an hour, no, i was not ready yet