a friend who was kind once, more than kind bathes outside in the frost in a claw-foot tub. does the steam stay thick? is it chased from his cheek by a coveting wind? is the surface resolved, hot and fast against the air. how quickly does heat long to join the world, in all its breadth and chill and hidden places. how it flies. how it flies. there has always been a period marked 'for now'. it is always good to love it. bare appearance, interlude against wild wandering. against the solitude of the heartpath. how long is the line on your palm? how long the detour between meetings. i resist the thought that undoes me - to be a face between that warmest cloister of blood and air and their perpetual coming and coming and being and being. any place encircled is a centre by default. desire elects its locus evermore, which stays or strays outside the arbitrage of luck. there is breathlessness in some relating, the ruthless expense of breath against it. there is coal and furnace speaking. there is an end in sight. there is sight, and it rues its access to the future. there is the non-place of the future to drop sentiment into. to withhold silence from silence, to breed more of it.