Now It's Nothing

A window.
A Japanese Kimono closed against its
skin--white as apple flesh.
Nothing like a surgeon’s poison.
Nothing like a block of ice; like a salt-lick; like an undertaker’s dream.
Two nothings on top of one nothing.
I am nothing…
Now that’s a nocturnal idea. That idea has no teeth. That idea
is as complicated as a tarantula, with eight eyes
and as many legs, hairy as a dog.
That faint aroma of your mother’s perfume is very real
even though you’re six or seven states away. That’s nothing.
Nothing fleeing nothing.
Losing in a battle of zero.
A murderer’s eye with you in it, like the bloody seed of a tomato.
Your deceased cat come back to life, you swear it.
Your father’s urn crawling out of its grave.

These are characters who cry and we are addicted to their pain.
Their pain is a synonym for our own.

I am quiet as an ocean tonight.

Our brains consent to our deaths,

which is proof that they are indifferent to us.