keening raze when you care about someone, but you know they will never feel much of anything for you. at least you think you know where you stand with them & what to expect, for a while, but they keep shifting & changing & saying things & not doing things & splitting into noxious fumes that seep into your lungs & twist them into knotted clumps that don't know what to do with themselves, so they just kind of sit there, smoking cigarettes & looking indifferent, replaying imagined moments of radiance blurring like tears smearing mascara into streaks of black purity, as if they were a way to express a love that nothing else could communicate. you do what you can. you show that you care, even when it doesn't seem to break the skin of this stupid, tepid thing...the knowledge that you could really show this person how beautiful they are, if you could just be with them. you would concentrate all of your energy into making their life as beautiful as it could possibly be, & you would be genuinely thankful for every day you were given the chance to give everything, share everything, taste everything, touch everything. you wouldn't have to try to be witty or poetic, because everything around you would breathe poetry. you could cup your hands & catch it, only to let it fly away, knowing it would come back to you. your voice is like silk melting into a flame in the belly of languid sex. the eyelids itch, like screaming leaking through walls that aren't thick enough to block out the sound entirely, but rob it of most of its harshest frequencies, making it sound as if it's coming from miles away, cutting through but not quite connecting. i wonder how long a person can go without some kind of intimacy, before they start to shut down. it's probably a subtle, drawn-out thing, if shutting down is even the end result. there are probably people who go their entire lives without ever experiencing the intimacy they crave with every desperate thrust of their desecrated hearts, pumping on no matter how much damage they incur because they just don't know how to do anything else. i dream in circles, even if the shape isn't obvious. 040717 ... . . 040808 ... mangrove where we go without, we create it for ourselves. intimacy can be so different than you think, deep beneath your skin, coming out with every word and breath and thought. some people can maybe go forever on intimacy that no one else even notices. 040809 what's it to you? who go blather from