Legs stretched out, crisscross, zigzag
where did the words go you drenched me in at dusk?
Blankets and pillows
a fortress made for whispers in the dark.

Rattling the cage we've built
rocking our boat to see if it will sink.
Doors won't open, close
this isn't the first time I've locked myself outside.

The rays of the sun heat up the glazed balcony through stained windows and holes between them; pull of a string hanging from the ceiling releases them in file to be pulled back and feel a cozy breeze on the skin being heated by what has enabled life. There. Now, the sound of dragging a couple old plastic chairs covered in dust, traces of dried up dirty water and pillows. The ground is rough and uneven beneath bare feet.

Butt goes in one seat, legs follow suit rising towards the sky gently landing in the other. Book in hand, facing the light, placing her glasses on her bare leg she begins to read.

Even with her hair tied back in a pony tail, she can catch traces of the sweet scent it's left on her back and shoulders. So warm. It feels quiet. Everything is still safe for the occasional buzzing of some insect or another.

It is these conversations, words that make any of this worthwhile. It is that you are here, now. It is how you are here now. It is your scent in the morning, your tired arms lazy but firm; you a graveyard to bury myself into the way my face burrows into the blankets covering your chest. The way light dances on your tired eyelids through lacy windows, the way it always must have and I am only seeing it for the first time.

It is so much beauty, imagined, to exist in one moment that everything liquefies anew. Instead of a tidal wave pushing through every dam and inhibition to ravenously consume, it trickles in from the outside, salty rain eroding the fabric of being. Tired and desperate, it is no longer sure or if it's willing to discover anything that might eventually, most probably, reveal itself. It is, quite possible, at this stage, that it is only interested in quietly vanishing from existence like the smoke that every so often gets waved out of the way once a candle goes out.