time wrinkles
   a brief softening
   and then a flood.
rain

tinged with lavender, mild scent

of rot and freshness. a decay and a blossom.
   shedding the old skin, again,
   studded with the last universe’s stars.

rictus, squeezing — pain. the silent sound of tearing.

blood becomes time. then a slinky of selves, wormholing haphazard

between those spaces
between our words
between us,

   when i —
   when we —

that look

between us, before i move all at once — we move — who first? all at once — and we

move as if we can close that space between us, absorb it, make it something new

      — rotting scent of lavender —

      this iteration’s fossil stars.

keep shedding, hungry for the end while you yearn the beginning,
   baby ouroboros. it feels most right when i kiss myself.

                  mirror, mirror,
                  the dark universe above. the dark ocean below.
the smell of salt and lavender, the lapping sound
of waves, or wet kissing.

                  something will be born here —
                  already is.
                  shed universes,
                  thin and papery and discarded.
               drift onto the sea like tan pantyhose
               and float like leaves, nearly translucent.

this universe unclothes me kinder than you. it is me, i fold back on myself, containing all of you — the rotting, blossoming, ineluctable spaces between words and stars, the ineluctable words between spaces and stars

when you can speak those words —
      but nobody ever can —
when you can know what i mean —
      but nobody ever can —

now you know the boundless, unknowable

loneliness of one universe. these words of
    slippery fish, darting golden through the night, and the ocean, like dust.

(text me anyway.
i miss you.)