Come take a trip in my airship and we'll visit the man on the moon.

I breathe and no words come out because they have forgotten what it feels like to human. Coming home at the end of each day, puddling into purple sheets where strangers’ lives unfold strangely. Or not strangers, exactly. Somehow more familiar; so trope. You don’t connect with people because you are creating them she says. She says You use them to propel your story and the words resonate somewhere hidden in the synopsis.

Leaving Seattle for the second time takes too long like I wasn’t meant to leave. The city circles in on itself. Like a labrynth, like the inner ridges of an ear or seashell. I drive successively smaller circles until the hills take my breath away. I migrate closer to the vibration of the center. The interstate plays hideaway games. It stays lost forever if I forget to keep seeking.

There will always be bridges and bridges and water. Lights stretched across liquid like mirrored cities. We could skinny dip if it weren’t for the cold. The blue t-shirt shares my bed when she can’t. For three days I hold it to my face to create her scent. Imagine warm water drenched in pink petals, or the way light tastes at sunset. The cards say Stay the cards say Go. When I go gravity evanesces and shimmers like grease over a hot skillet. In a gas station bathroom neither here nor there my hands look too alive gripping the sink. Outside there is too much sky so I hide and pray for clouds.

When she goes gravity fractures and lodges in my chest. I can’t swallow around the splinters so I stop trying. I am growing new skin beneath the burn. I am giving this time to heal for once without rushing. My fingertips are their own pulse. I can feel your heartbeat she says. She says Vou pensar em você com freqüência. Não. Eu vou pensar em você sempre. The night before. Her bottom lip pulls out and down every time she swallows something important. She means to speak but can’t yet. But ice cream and candles and the people behind us more in love with their own voices than each other. The man in the corner is writing himself. We are all characters. And the wage of sin is death he says. He says Hey do you know what time is it? and we don’t.

There will always be bridges and bridges and water when the city zigs and zags across itself. Seattle all circles, Portland all lines. And yesterday. Rain falling on wind chimes while earthquakes echo through these bones; chemicals leech from the marrow. The body trembles so strangely. I migrate closer to the center of the vibration, sluice sour sweat from sick skin. I show her picture to strangers in bars. I tuck tightly rolled love notes between black bricks, in a café on the other side of water and water and bridges.

These are the adjectives I give her: exquisite, timeless, beautiful. Pulse like a slow river swollen with spring. Everything feels so trite on my tongue. I breathe with no words and remember how to human.

Angels on your body.

-b