when I write toward the world, I am pushed out of it.fingering language’s tether, I ask to be opened.the saying about cake is a trinity: wanting—eating—having.duality, framed as a contradiction, forgets desire.the mouth insists, an abject shuttle.my wanting turns on the invitation to move through, but not out:I’m pulled back, into the fold.if you must return to me after a long absence, let me protest first this length.let me pick the season.I take you to the winter woods and show you the apartment building newly visible through trees.the branches are naked, and then, to the sky, so are we.the pace of a miracle, something sudden.when you say “serious as a heart attack,” I think of how rapid a fall from the ledge of eye level.I place my thoughts in rabid water.a man suspended from the jungle gym curls his legs into his body; he remains the same height.when I picture winter in my mind, I place an orange in a neat bed of snow.I am so busy in my ritual gesture, I forget to be simultaneous.the metaphor delights, the lake swallows, the noise drowns.as if a landscape drapes a body in paint.as if the gilded frame.heat, colorless, rises from the vent in my neighbor’s rooftop, shimmering the air.I suggest we reconsider the past or I imagine you handling it as I have—shaved of a protective awning.the grid, a fine mesh, objects to my movement and rewards me with a mirage.my ears prickle in the cold—any exterior burns me.leaving its forks lying on the table, the future makes for an exit.the weather is either coming or going.fulfilling its own bidding, a season undoes itself.driving into the night’s forehead, I see snow suspended: an explosion of tails.the thing I desire, the cause of my suffering.my desire, too, causes me suffering.if I must countenance it, why not be its object.cake with a thick slather of icing.doing a puzzle, I piece together little men.my hand is a spotlight on the line, I follow its thread into a void, seeing before me never morethan a breath’s length.you become the orange.I call it again, a slice at a time.my tongue lets me make of you a hymn.I know language is plenty alive because when he calls me a good girl, I come.