fantastical lights from faraway places
retain their moment in time and I mine
settling myself into the gendered slurry
that is English
those lights
candles for my bath
as I stub the life from this lepisma saccharina
here’s a snapshot
it will be six months later
during a pandemic
when I finally stir myself
to clean up its corpse
grey in life, grey in death
almost indistinguishable from the grout
I can’t write today, I can’t
I’m a mote, should be mute, a little scrotey
blemish on the terrifying backside of English letters
all jealousy, a tunnel through inadequacy
reaching up through all this debris
for a garden of kindness
a shield against the noise
instead
a mask
over the top of my face
years ago I got the plague mask
years ago
and on the bottom of my face
a white rectangle, broken into diamonds
a fabric diamond on my face
I never had one for my hand
I am a metagraph of ‘something into something else’
my mind and my DNA
once I had a face and now
because I love you
I do not
