when i say i don't want to exist, i am trying to ask for the high sharp note of a lemon, split across my tongue.

we limit speech to apologies and collisions, restrict touch to skin. i no longer trust scales, prayers, or repetitive numbers. we watch the hospital on tv, eleven seconds between explosion and sound. pillows of grit bubble into blue. our legs still through too many movies, neither learn nor forget the distance between skin and chrysalis. i open myself but remain human and paper. the music does not change and colour does not fade. i clean the bathroom floor. inside my nose the smell of warm water.

if you asked i would have explained in physical terms. the blue veins of the chicken you ate, as though mood did not touch other body parts. the unpoetic safety of colon, carpal, sesamoid. i hold the taste of jasmine in my mouth, your tongue an absence. latticework of space.