in the middle of the night i worry about becoming
an empty vessel. i think of ignorance, and how it leaves me constantly
uncovered no matter what i learn, the way in which other’s ignorance dresses and undresses
me so that i have to relearn myself in their eyes whenever i go outside or
be punished when i do not make the
appropriate accommodations.  i do not want to have to value other people in the ways they do not value me. i feel sick writing about the way i cannot sleep because
i am weightless at 1:45 am. i feel embarrassed.
i sleep better with someone else next to me because then i can ignore myself and hold their body in my absence or persuade them to fill me. sexual relationships do not exist and in the hours that i fear i do not exist there seeps an erotic
sense of paradox where i learn to find absence in other people’s bodies and that discovery
is  something that buries me in them up to my teeth.
the attachment to this abandon, holding still
for it, making time bend towards it, is called making love…