the space above my ears.

Colorado and the Hypothetical Letter

There is the breaking, the losing, and then, in time, the return of shards,

Sharp, hazardous, but mostly useless out of context.

There are canine indentations at end of a pen marked with a bank logo,

Ballpoint, sore teeth.

A clock not ticking, drifting.

A stallion not running, standing.

Two lips, parted, not sewn.

Everything looks to them.

Everything watches the watery ink come forth from in between the soft horizontal vault doors, flowing like the River Styx and coating teeth in midnight.

It travels out and down a pale chin, a pale neck, crawling along a pair of sharp collarbones, down a stark-white shirt, struggling over fading legs and spatters onto the floor where two pale feet should be.

It represents the ever so persistent narrowing of the mind, and is quite possibly the last thing you'll ever see under the light of day.

If it helps, everything is headed there too.

I'm headed there, then down the stairs, then back up, trudging through hallways and aisles.

I'm being followed so I walk faster and whatever is behind me walks faster in turn.

I'm running and I've already reached the dreaded dead end when I find out it was an echo.

It was just shadow soles imitating best as they could, falling milliseconds behind the click of my own shoes, wreaking havoc with delay...

Forgive me, I've forgotten my place.

Apologies, my cursive tongue is too swollen for my own mouth; things slip out sometimes.

Pardon, the text is becoming hard to read as the traffic lights become fewer and far between.

You're asleep in the backseat, breathing out frost onto the window.

Look to the side and the fence posts are blurring together like the line between you and I.

I'm thinking about morning and I consider writing something in the clouds you've made on the glass just in case I'm not the same person by the time I wake up.

There are pictures and relative angles visible through each innocuous gap, but stop focusing so hard and the scene will sew itself together like a stop-motion film.

Tell me I'm talented, call me smart, say I'm the only one who could have pulled it off.

Say it, say I'm important, make it permanent.

Mold it into a mantra I can whisper to myself as sweat dampens my neck under the buzzing yellow drugstore lights.

I'm trying to decide between two identical boxes of discount chocolates.

They're not different whatsoever, that's why it's so hard to choose.

I know we're running late and I know you're growing very irritated by this point but you don't get it, one must be wrong.

The faucet is still on back home.

Don't tell me what I already know.

I can't think, I'm probably failing so many tests right now...but priorities, priorities.

It's only that, though, in the end.

A test.

Fatally indecisive, confused to a fault, she writes.

That seems fair enough.

It's yet another lock clicking into place, but nothing more.

Shackles on the wrists of a 'Man of God!'

Ostracized and forgotten,

Killed tragically by a savior complex.

"Should we be watching this?" "Are we supposed to see all the things they do with the man behind the curtain?"

"Check the manual."

No. We shouldn't be here.