February | 2026 | pisceanesque

A bath’s edge, the rim of my thought bucket,
where I keenly place my two soles
to drown outside while I swim within.
Wrinkly digits, an abstract powerhouse
to hold atop them the dumbbell limbs
that carry my towering mind aloft.

And in between, a puffy skin-house,
a minor inconvenience of perpetual need,
the cage I chose with which to bundle this luggage of great worth;
should worth have more purpose than value;
should emptiness be filled with its own garden of delights.

And above all, a roaring ocean,
a great white-noise shark of bladed memories,
a diver’s tank of oxygen to place my tiny movies
in their own bubbly vaults –
orbs into which my after-dinner 3rd eye
spills like a secret to fill and stain like wine.

And as I watch my trailers, all wishy-washy
and streamed in tears,
one foot climbs to my chest to hug me
and the other takes our sole soul
and loofahs its way along my skin-pages spa
to make new of something old in a silent, pointed dance,
unpartnered, but inseparable from this ocean of pain.

As the numbness settles in,
eased not by the misty-arms of this warm aether,
wrapped as ghostly in my past pasts not present,
my balance remains, heartbeat synced,
– paused –
while my toppled zest for love depletes.

And in this swell, where fancies frolic
and frolicking fancies break my heart once more,
I would sooner fall into sharpened creatured smiles
than comfort a bossom’d knee
bent with expired hope.

Now we escape . . .
and in the going
we move a heavy purpose to its final resting place
somewhere
where finality is an ambitious dream
relying solely on broken dependencies and
stick figure hangmen
to take the guesswork out of each step
as we syphon what we have left of our spirit
to deliver our limbs the home they deserve –
where brown is chocolate
and not hand-me-down anger;
where happy is default
and not the result of
having made it beyond –
although making it beyond
in our already frayed ankles
is our easiest flight together . . .
a separate kind of silence
pre-destined to join us at last
through the comfort of our very leaving