I WALK to the doorway; the man is inviting. He motions for me to enter. A dirt floor, unknown particles in the air. He pulls a dirty plastic chair from a neat stack by the entryway and I take my seat, explaining to him why I am here. The laminated list of research questions rests in my hands as my breath becomes labored.

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She flicks back up through her messages. She scrolls down terraces of conversation. Grey, blue and green bubbles. All icy-cold. All dismissive and alienating and horrifying. You are there reading this with her but she has no idea that you are there reading this with her.

Think about whether you’ve ever read a newspaper over somebody's shoulder.

XV
Life is a mega-deal

XVI
Lapsed into steam and fell against the bathroom wall
my mind’s eye bleeding gay semen
the suspect angles of light on the sink
and the mirror
and the reflections again
of the perspired neck and sternum
wet dew of mushroom and chicken pluck of youth
Wilkes Booth suicide

Bent apostles looked on: the view marked by waves and whiteness strewn across aptitude; a fluttering flightless sea with tides of white-hot intensity. Patiently. Harmful; eve. Caressing the soft foreskin of the window of dawn, currents cried out from the heavens of hell; trees dropped the fruit sold by merchants in the streets; scalding pricks of iron-clad serpents slyly tucked themselves in, curled folds of amniotic webs: gilded gold. Shine through fortresses and forests and fish and fish and masks. Holding pears and horns and bare pretentious mime. Soothed handles, they prayed. Chipped and maimed. Sand embedded in the follicles of their sleeve. Crying out with sad truths of disaster and spoken force. Riding cyclones they embarked, soft and greased and practical. Flown aviation into the dusk, they spoke. Increasing levels of abysmal makeshift arks, they spoke. Apples and peaches and nectarines abandoned and instead they ate rampant festered ointment intended to lay at rest. Hence virtuous rhymes were learnt, again.