Is it an absence weaving through the streets of little houses on a quiet work week afternoon, or an absence in myself, that makes the walls, windows, and sidewalks hover as if they’re not quite here?
The crisp sun gives the sense that things are shadows.
One might not even hear the border clang shut, the patrol lurking with jeeps and dogs, doing nothing, police ready to handcuff someone for trying to break through. So many economies ill-suited to human need land on people’s backs and push them out.
Today I can’t see directly who is being pushed.
And glitter, the senses glittering, I too wish to shine above the groove-locked horizon, sweet perfumed flesh undergoing alteration from its own past. I imagine places I might go, shops like stamped-out sheds offering someone else’s idea of my image of myself.
The it that I am in, once again described as thick.
If I pause long enough to see through myself, I too might find “paradise along the street lights,” as a friend said to me. I’m touching a texture thinner than paper and know I’m ready to be peeled again, picked out of a dusty corner and set beside a sign on a highway looking towards crater-pocked snow-dusted mountains.