ancient amateur

I don’t know this thing, this silver and brown thing. The machined handle, the chipped wood. The residues and musty vestiges of tobacco. The little metal embellishments. I trust this thing. I know it’s use, it’s purpose, it’s presence. What I wish to know, however, is whose lips held this thing. Whose lungs did it fill? May I touch these well-made things?

The family is here. We go for a walk today, string out along the trail then spring back together to recuperate in the shade. Normally, I hike quickly. My goal is to get to the gleaming lake, or the cold, clean-cut peak, then begin my structured revels. There is a process for this. Today, though, my grandmother and I walk slowly. There are several ways to walk slowly: regally, with measured paces, lazily, with loose hips and soft ankles, and perhaps another: leaning forward, arms swinging, heels solid. My grandmother and I walk lazily. I feel the rock in my shoe, notice the valleys scoring my grandmother's face, and feel the sun embracing my arms.

Swimming in cold lakes should be encouraged. Not only does it cleanse the body of perfumes made far away, it saturates you with pond scum and mud and detritus, and damn, does it feel good. In the water, you are invincible. You can surface, far from shore, and let the sun copper-shine your hair in a jagged halo. You can slip under the water and commune with the fish. Those sleek stewards of the lake taught you how to unzip the current and dive in, how to gasp in the air and sing under the surface, and, most importantly, how to swim with your eyes open. See, humans like to flutter their feet and close their eyes, but that hides the muddled green heaven before you. Pull your lids wide, I say, and drink in the cold and refracted world!

you flutter in peppercorns and daisies theobromine is your wine petrichor, your perfume a hundred thousand instances of worldly absurdity gravitating to you

caress the sun which drips and flows from my mouth my hunger is an abyss and you a marble. minute and absurd in the dark but blue all the same i'll pour out that light and serve it to you on a silver platter drink, drink, please my dark is home, i need it. let me eat. the skin above my heart is thin and stretched shadows flock to the space between beats

Overlined lips and hangnails Chewed lips and manicures Pursed lips slip past smiling Lips crack and bleed and smile