This life is burning and it is turning
inside out in an effort to reach,
to breach the thick and the vast nothing
that nests on my chest
like a demon and mad horse.

The space between my arms is an empty space,
a hurting space,
a burning and a strangling space.
Paula? Suzanne?
How do you manage to get by?
How do you manage to go on
when the emptiness crushes YOUR chest
like a nutshell
I don't know how I don't know why
my head is buzzing from listening
to pilgrimage:
an inscription on my skin,
a map of scars and scratches,
a sword that cuts my heart apart,
that scatters it into the winds
where it finds peace
and it can beat
in tune with longitude and longing.

Words don't work anymore:
to make myself understood
is as impossible as
to make myself be loved.
This is more than just a broken thread,
this is a texture torn apart,
the fabric that has kept me warm,
woven by your love and understanding.
There is nothing as real
as my headful of bees
and my heartful of birds
that keep on flapping nervously
into the net of lack and loss and longing.
Some things will shine through my body
and they ache for a chance.
And I do not mean these words.

Now what would you have me do?
I wait, I wait, I wait:
left by you,
robbed of vision,
overfilled with memory
and only three weeks until Christmas.

Paula, why aren't you here except in words,
Suzanne, why aren't you here except in voice
when I need someone to lean on to:
I'm falling apart and who will put me back together?
You're coming to me
but it takes so much time
and I want to march towards you.
The distance between me and her
is just an inch and just a step
and still
I will
not cover it
even by a thousand years
of travelling down these lines of ashes.

I'm pushed towards the edges
of a world I cannot say a word about
except that it's a waterfall
so deep the floods will fall
without a sense, without a sound.
Falling, falling, hey! I don't see the bottom.
A sea beyond all harbors,
a sea beyond all borders,
a sea ruled by a raving captain
waving to me
bound to a fish.