You sit on a rooftop, watching the smoke curl above your head—a cloud of pretty ashes, grey against the moonlight, perhaps the one they are convinced lingers above your head—and you taste destruction in your mouth, savour the way blood drips from between your shredded gums, grin—fiendish, feral, empty(?)—decorated by the glass half-glinting in the moon, bright where it stuck when your jaw began to clamp down on a mouthful of things too sharp for you to chew on, and it tastes normal, this thing, as normal as the flames licking the inside of your ravaged mouth, too un- noticeable beneath the fire in your stomach from the thing in your hand you always dream of sipping from when every- thing feels too vast, when it feels like the only way to narrow it all down to a thing you can handle, is to do ‘it’—stand up, and walk off the roof of the building, instead of only ever standing close enough to court vertigo; and you wonder why it always comes down to this for you, why the thing that stills the clawing, is this dream of smoke curling above your head, drifting from your mouth, and the butt of the glowing cancer in your hand, whetted by the echo of liqueur you don’t even feel, have never liked the taste of (it all tastes the same you say), while you lay on your back, soothed by the sensation of feeling tiny, and gaping, a lone figure wanting the stars within reach, content to raise your palm against them, and watch it fade into the dark, while they glitter reassuringly, telling of how vast the world is, and how much more there is to see of it, even if you ache in knowing you will probably touch so little of it—but you did always like the feel of flames too close to your skin, and the sensation of drifting, stars too far away to cling to; you’ve always been more grounded unanchored. K.N.O.W. Friday, August 11 – Monday, August 14, 2017.