When we are but seven billion Lilliputian specks, ebbing away into the
black, the least he can do is plant a handful of tarnished cranks in our palms,
tell us this clockwork is a hoax, that we can harvest these seeds of cranks
into bronzed poppies. But when the lens tosses and zooms out of focus,
even smoldering constellations are too distant to wink their secrets.
I am a vortex of billowing leaflets, catching at the fork in the road,
breaking between chasms of sable avenues without a backwards glance.
I would like to fall into a limbo, watch colorless lights pulsate around me,
touch sunless corkscrews as they blink against these crumbling walls.

I should be different, I think. That mechanic of a man weaved me from clove
hitches and frayed strings, from cotton braids and frizzy tangles. Veins sprout
across my wrists like scraggy teal branches, snatching for who knows what,
for I must be different when I yield sylph tails for arteries, coursing tidewater
for eyes, and glistering stardust beneath my parchment skin. I want to weigh
these metaphors on my tongue and drown out the response, paint nebulas on my
fingernails as if my hands alone could hold the world and all its answers, before
he unearths my scattered bits, searches until the leaflets crawl out of the alleyways—

So how would I like it to end? How would I like for him to etch my name?

He tells me little lies, lies that sing me to sleep, chant me into numb
satisfaction, paralyze my shaky breaths and expel toxic from my
lungs. If he said the end was nearing, how would I pass my time?
There is an ache in his grace, his genesis, so unreal it makes me blind.