her birthday

when i lose the pattern, I slip away, and am the string missing the needle through lost eyes. I can't keep the headphones close enough, can't have friends in furthest reaches. there's no light in the—garbage—paper bill—cold metal tongues—clippings.

and speak: Reclaim the beauty!, but unmoving, swallowing the hours, stealing bathroom tiles, monsters behind my violent ache, the clear corpse of things, and her birthday.

fifty-three minutes until you fight for another, until colour upon colour, the beauty of blood, and scar of ages.

what would the page number, paragraph—my stomach rising up to, visions of death.

(I am lost, in hiding here, the brackets, of safe wood.)