I am alone and therefore everyone says
that I stopped talking a long time ago
more and more myopic I keep my eyes like a snail
at the top of my ballpoint pen
it smells like poppy seed cake and popping chestnuts
walls are warmer than a charcoal fueled stove
Raskolnikov is asleep on the upper shelf of my library

I can’t tell stories about the fingers
of the dead the paralytic elders the aborted children
about the heart as a black box
smoked on the inside by cheap candles
I don’t want to doze off before the rain
passing like like a stream through my blood
would finally stop

born more many times from a cherry petal
I was so white
that hungry wolves’ fangs reddened at their roots