botulinum toxin
whorls of frayed thread
tapping at my door as if to say
"let us in"
and they plead so gently with me
i don't notice the pinprick on my ankle
of course,
there is agap agap a gap in the door.

curled up in a bed the sheets
are made of this stuff too, i wonder why
they dont hurt so much when you look at them
but there seems to be a conversation of plucked
guitar strings and feathers struck
an emotional chord

this one line from a Yongyu Chen poem
ties a thread to the door handle and
i pull as hard as i can to tie my mouth shut
door pulls back get away from me
why are you here instead of hating me you
love the me that i told you i wasn't
"I build a library for a child."

this will be a cavern one day
timeless dripping stalagmites, paint dripping
swim with the bleached white fish
eyelessly crying at the needless spillage
of all this color when
the outside world needs it more, does it not?
their fins tremble, anxious, and they continue to swim
through the holes of a net that binds me tighter

muddy mixed paint absorbed into the thread
tenebrous water surrounds my bed and my cheeks fill with
pigment and pointless analogies bloom in my left ear
searing, burning sensation as my blood-no, some voicefull substance
screeches in melancholy
"why are you hurting me"
and it hurts so much yes it does
but the color has a home now
though my eyes have long faded away, the surface
did not need it after all.