extraction raze embedded in this scarf somehow now are bits of dirt or debris or the sloughed-off skin of walnuts, though it doesn't seem possible that the last of these would wind up here, pimpling the synthetic pelt you wrap around yourself to ward off winter's worst. maybe this is where all the dreams you've been losing have gathered. what looks to the layperson like something to be washed away is really the splintering of your sleep given shape and heft. one piece of your proximal past affixes itself to the white of your weakest eye. it won't be blinked or blown away. and tears will not come when you need them most. you fill a glass with water, raise rim to bone beneath marred mammalian globe, and drown half your vision in a drink you cannot taste. you make a bayou of a serving bowl. submerge your face from forehead to upper lip. the offending fragment of some fuzzed-out film remains. you pry it loose with a damp cloth and some spite, not caring if you're wounded worse along the way. you squint to see a small foreign object that might have once been the seed of something worth preserving. it's already gone. 260209 what's it to you? who go blather from