my fingertips are lightheaded.
dancing around the room,
they leave behind my hands
and the stumps for fingers
that i now have instead.
watching them escape easily,
i stand dazed and startled,
and finally collapse to the floor
to avoid my hurtling fingertips
and creep beneath the table,
watching them with enormous pupils.
the cats are laughing mockingly
and breathlessly at me,
at my foolish weaknesses.
the moments tick by one by one
and i can do nothing more,
only sit beneath the table,
crouching helplessly in a tiny heap,
hoping my fingertips will return soon:
the night is coming and it grows dark.
my years are melting away
and i am becoming a child again
if i ever was one at all at heart
and my clothes billow from me
like an oversized circus tent.
if the blackness in the room grows,
and grows and grows and grows,
as it seems to be doing right now,
then it will swallow me up
and i'll be left to do nothing but fly
forever in its melting midst.