There’s a puzzle, within me, that I’ve finally found some missing pieces to. Well, not so much found as made, but that’s just semantics. It’s still not complete. There’s gaps here and there, frayed edges, chipped paint and the occasional loose thread. Motor oil on the knees of my jeans and a pin from a frag I never threw. 

It’s comfortable, in those spaces. Lie supine in the time between heartbeats, a clearing haloed by bare branches and dawn’s chill. Deep in a stillwater spring, slough off the old skin that chafed and don a new crown, a new name. Drip blood upon the earth for everything that language has no room for.

And it’s difficult. This ‘everything’ is exactly what I want to pinpoint, to write a dissertation on with flowing meter and flowering prose, to take a scalpel to and dissect until it’s hideous and meaningless and nothing but flesh on the blade. Piece by piece the puzzle is completed and recreated and I wonder if I’ll never stop wanting to take it apart and try again, from the beginning.

These things, though, that are hard to convey. I’m conflicted. I’m ecstatic. I’m the halogen bulbs that come on when the sun sinks to the horizon, over the lake. Scraped knuckles and sap-sticky palms from climbing trees. I am a sum of my parts - whether they be broken, whole, or makeshift. There’s vines stringing these bones together.

I’ve come far enough that I hope they will someday bear flowers. 

BAGGED FOX // 0097