Half of war is water you bequeath to the houseboat. You leave chance to water. Garlic bobs around my head. Leave me & the squirm of my wake bends the pink-knuckled grass. I trust the fat of the mud, the beady eggs bubbling up against my thigh. Trust is black silk, the grass of the green worried night. “Is that a real poem or did you write it yourself?” To inform is to give shape, O not even the fragment stands alone.

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We open windows to fade the paintings: if mood-based logic, if an apron & nothing underneath, if the fold-out couch contorts, if our instincts are selfish?, if the dry walk from the train, if I fall over, if I fall between rocks into the sea, if the Astro-turf slips off the balcony, if I don’t know what to do with your sex parts, if we roll the tree-stump into the elevator, if the threat is our instinct?, if more pooling, if writing erased?, if you could hear the parentheses fail to close,