After a cry, a nap so heavy you feel drugged, you come up
for air and test how skin might breathe again through silk,
cotton, viscose; the humidity that’s settled in your hair.
Out of every corner of the house, when you sweep, you collect
the dust that bodies have made— flakes sloughed off elbows
and knees, the head that lolled on the sofa pillow or rested
in cupped palms. How is it we haven’t managed to completely
rub away into nothing? But then again, from our 2 square meters
of skin, 30 to 40 thousand cells shed every minute, only to renew
every 28 days. So even at this level, biology resists the drama of our
zero sum games, the take-it-or-leave-its; those ideals of perfection
paired with such stubborn unwillingness to compromise—
when even the fish thrown back in the river after the barbs
are taken out leap back into the current, injured but alive.
In response to Via Negativa: End times.