Firstly, I would like to say that I am sorry.

Right now I’m kissing you on the shore

of a lake so broad it is pulling all of

the vistas of the earth in toward it. The plug

island at which we kiss is clean, like your

ears after you rise from the bath. I am trying

my best not to kiss myself but for some

reason I am callously kissing my tears. Callous as

the typhoon at the apogee of my leaving you

at a local train station. This station, its name, I want to say, is

Nishikoizumi, but it must have been Spencer Street Station.

I think I’m accidentally kissing myself because you’re pulling

away from me and my arms are threshing like the

ponderous wings of wasp ants. It’s hard not to rise from a

bath wet as the afternoons trying to feel for the world’s

draw, crying of laughter for the foolishness of our dance

around naming. But we did find some titles. Then again,

there had been that canning of the visiting bear. I don’t want to say

that we compressed the scene into convenience, like tin, but a brand

did strike the hire car, sent it sliding across that seeping

glacier as old as the world. I want to say that I’m

sorry I saw us in the blue reflections of faceless masks.

Well, you’re kissing yourself now and longing for adumbration at

the caldera of the warm, excavating lake, hiding under one of its

names, soaking in blue. Ko-omote’s mouth opened

sometime between then and now, didn’t it.