animal fortress child keeps

i am alien: too fast, too slow. my breath radiates, my head to swamp. is it best to float and touch nothing? the silence or violence? or the pluck from your ribs that once held far? now i find you in my bloodbath, stony love. now i find nothing.

this bruise hangs round a spider's web, dripping cruel ghosts into shuttering gills, mouth wide with the miles, running away from the robots in his head (there is voice but requires a way to cup it in these hands.)

i cannot show you the miles of invisible ink all prickling around my dead crown, and yet this orbit has such intent—if i defy stars then all metal-flight, horrors chains!—but i can show you joy.

i am a shivering planet before happiness. i am the name of the moon of all my friends that come.

(i am crippled by some strange dictionary that licks my blood, but there is no light to dwell there, and so.)

(but though it is still not an easy thing, to try to show the imprint of love: its bones, its rags.)

all i can try to tell you is that while i have retreated from months (it's...somewhere in my pocket...some breath) i press my face to the glass and there is still a shimmering hope for you. and i cannot hardly think of how cold a wooden stair is.