FIGURE

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This next hour is indifferent green, bled across and 

gone, never claiming to have been different but still -

an hour to drag through.

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             Adjacent room, grey sand pools 

             through the apertures 

             of a phone call. 

             Each moment pressing into

             itself like a weak pulse.

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You’d like to do more

than map the space you take up. Naming the

paths, the synapses, drawing out the shapes

  of things as if this is command over them, it’s not. 

              Walking around like a clenched fist would you

                                      unfurl, fern-like, if approached
                              by the right syntax? Describe all

                        the intricacies like

                   tracing the lace of a tablecloth
                          spread out under a wide light. In a white

                           afternoon she asked you to scratch the
                              wax off old pearls, clean the studs

                               in silver-dip. You were stunned,

                                moved, and had nothing at all

                                 to say about it.