– for two tigers and a lion instead of punctuation marks
P  R  O  L  O  G  U  E
a half-light noon i wake up

inside nowhere. a campfire deep

within my breastbone and i know

i am human, hunting

for meanings as bandages,           
D   R   A   F   T 
  desire,         
              lack(?)
                          redu                /a/
                          cti            sl/ant/
                          on          /tru/
microscopedbodymicroscopedbodymicroscopedbody   
T    H    E         S    T    O    R    Y     
fatigued winter, the sky sculpted in ashes. Comma and Colon travelled

through circles, making sense of words, wrestling inside these pages. today,

the snow seemed enough. distances between the iris lights and the roads.

the typed sky, now became dawn-blue with its own falling.           
 ?               r            e                        d              r                     o                 
this city always failed them these exhausted words, violent as a heart.

they were walking home and right there Comma’s house a strangled sentence,

broken in. the day exited. and the house, crumpled by Full Stop, trying

to conclude a life, a paragraph’s wound that veined through the paper.

under the night’s cold skin, this ink kept blueing their existence.          
?         h            c          i                                h                        w     
there was much of a pause, then a ‘get out!’ then the second sweated,

a swoosh, a gone. ‘why didn’t you try to talk to him?” always,

colon with too much to hold. colon like a thirst that wouldn’t finish,           
s    r             e  t       t          u       t            a                   h         t      
‘silence? his explanation?’ 
y      l   l     u      f      s       h       i    t       h      c        t            a  c
‘i would rather let go, it’s ugly god. swear i still feel it, near.’ 
y              l                     g                                                      u                       
so i let go i guess, of my animal. again to continue or to go? is it good?

maybe trapped in this verse – the full stop, waiting for a home a stillness.

but dear readers, this writer has deleted that desire an erasure

of a heartbeat. to go yes. just to go. the house’s roof suddenly sentenceless, 
                                                                       a brutal sky.