Tomorrow night, I cry as activity instead of catharsis.

This little bloodstained duvet twisted between my bruises.

Why are you still here? A bleached monochrome dance

I bore into at every cusp between late night and early

morning. The Notes app dream journal woven in

half-delirium, half-life, but within is what may have

truly passed, if there is such a thing. Such is the pied

piper of evening sky: are the transient pinpricks above

liminal windshield dust or celestial negative space?

This is why I shake Descartes’ hand; a pretense.

Grip his palms gurney-white as my blackened soles

demarcate love from convenience; dissonance from

flesh. A too-sterile chain of suspicion stretches half a

link before evanescing amorphous, bits of iron and

thought drifting upwards my guttural ceiling light.

– Ava Chen