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.