the caring profession

your abeyance quivers & you stir,
a paralysed smile toying with the corners of your
eyes. obscured spectrums kiss your
supple, clouded flesh (the same patchwork material of
which i sutured, stuttering, and pasted
together to create ardour). you are positively
ablaze, but iridescent? – no. the
luminance is but an agitated soliloquy, so why
does you skin ferment? peppered & flecked,
like iodine
mottled with rhodonite,
tinged with the chlorophyll of eden.

you woke, head crashed upon the
chessboard. bishops for breakfast,
& a halo of knights coiled in your snarled
coiffure. & you realise your camouflage exists
for a nameless face inked nautical
adverbs on your skin; they looped lingering tendrils
of anaphoric references to chase
down hungry follicles, with the abstract nouns highlighted
in green ("highlight all you want– you
need," teachers advise); peace, generosity,
adoration. give me love, or give
me death, tattooed on your
dismantled & crooked lower
jaw,
with a lopsided idea
of passion.

that was the closest they could come to
concaving your heart, anyways.

retrace the cursive & pursue
the bold penmanship of the sans serif
lecture notes formatted into a frenzied duet of battling
lips. follow these collapsing
syllables (in times new romance), like footprints
in the sand, marked with the
broken limbs
dancing along the shoreline. find me, please –
i want you to know every terrifying detail of the
prologue to my very own comedic
tragedy – this piece of farce you may call a life – i
want to uncover the entirety of
my secrecy in a monologue to outwit king lear.

you smirk, reading my confession. your
celestial refraction pools out from
my words. my characters
forget their lines because my tongue is tied
in knots ("adorable," you say, but no one
believes you). sentences,
dappled with caesurae,
finished with question marks,
& fully utilising quotations – all
these "queries", & no
way to locate "answers"? so please,
just answer me.

assembling a name to my
face comes easily next time our steps
synchronise in the hallway &
post-it notes of supernatural
nonsense spiral from the library books you so
carelessly carry for me – as if regal coppers
surfing the downward spiral
of a taxing wishing well. i am open (but
not quite a book). an anthology of ambiguity, a collection
of certainty. the mystery
novel you could not predict, & the languages
both incomprehensible, but indistinguishably,
phonetically capturing. the historical document that no one
discovered, the postcard lost in the airmail &
swallowed by the seas stretched across the canvas below
the isle of man (or, as this incomprehensible,
but indistinguishably, phonetically capturing
language reads: i love man).

so let's ride to the isle of you, where the
carnations bloom even in the midst of the bruised winter,
dragonflies flock throughout the distance,
& the pawns that frequent the frontline are but
the seahorses buried beneath pearly
tides, searching for treasures &
fresh gravity-restricted raindrops &
genii who:
wish you were here?
no, no. they wish you well.
& sometimes you are well when you read my hidden
literature, but otherwise you sigh & mourn &
curdle? but you do not cease. you crave
to know every crevice in my persona,
every single lapse of my judgement,
my every imperfection (or "i'm
perfection" you misread defiantly, but still
understand).

i could never be happier & it's
all your doing. (suddenly) the skies are
transparent, & what's above is
sweet, & strange.