for fear the end is coming soon.

My body does not want to wake up
to this morning. To a day that
contracts rather than expands,
gradual as a wine bottle.
I want to spill forth,
my bundled limbs unbound,
mouth open: hungry for cherished ones,
yearning for words.
My body longs to feel changed by a single hour,
to be engulfed by the penumbral sky
shimmering through the trellis of clouds.
But it is simply casting lines.

My feet do not want to feel the floor beneath them,
to push up against my spine
and endure the lathering of new skins
as roads on my bones.

To feel the years
dropping like pennies into my stomach.