I read the air,
heavy with mistaken rain,
and felt moss, like wet carpet
from when I always forgot to
return my towel to the rack
next to the shower
The soft ground was cold comfort
to repeatedly bending knees.
Time was slow (comparatively).
My face, the smoothest
it had been since puberty
(from a kind man who might have
perceived my fear, but could not
parse my gratitude)
was shining, remembering
the you that I believed in
My breath was timed,
one for each two steps,
fast - rubbing my trachea
liberating the taste of
iron in my mouth
that iron, realizing its own disorder
(and loving it) refined itself into a sheet,
an edge, a point.
I gripped a handle.
The truth imagined in my heart,
now realized by a shivering hand.
