1.    These days, everything is left open.
2.    I have told S what we spoke about. She receives it without incident. ¹
3.    There is a night where the body turns inward, opens to an unread message. Why does the mind assign guilt. ²
4.    No one accounts for placing a poem. ³
5.    You have never been so afraid of the new year. ⁴
6.    Barter contours for openings. The year narrows – the you I see in the mirror is still you. ⁵
7.    A Taiwanese series plays in the background. ⁶
8.    ⁷  The unreachable walls in the bathroom always damp – you take the brush beneath the basin to swipe fungi-forming. ⁸
9.    Why is that I am able to feel your absence but not your presence ^{9 10}.
       
      *

1.    Are we still the same – I asked. We are still us.
2.    I wondered if it has caught up with the body. Even mercy searches for itself.
3.    Community, still gathering.
4.    Is there tenderness where I am not seeing.
5.    Your eyes lowered to your fingers – once precise – now swollen, holding fluid.
6.    In it, aftermath. My parts lift, briefly. Then settle. In us, love does not hold – it disperses into longing.
7.    Unlike this container,
8.    Hadn't I protected you enough – her voice level.
9.    when we are both in Orchid,
10.    with our left limbs – sprawled –

across
         
         
          the floor.