today, i bought new trainers. shed the old cracked skins. eight pavement years soaked and read into shin bones and knee caps. vibrate the spanse of spine like cars shake on roads when they're shook. and the radio beats songs like raindrops on windscreens. the tap and the tap and the drip. the just irregular right. rhythm. and then somehow new rubber makes souls faster than they thought they could. braver, still. no blue dreams. no capes for flying away.

he curls me up in his lap like kittens. months sing themselves away into my back as if moments were the whispers i wake up with, some mornings, still caught and floating around in my twisted hair. his tongue shifts, says stay alive. his breath warms the broken memories on my skin. draws van Gogh's clouds around my collar bones.