A pillow chooses this moment
to fall upon my coffee mug
and offer it the spice of its
sun-dried hide. I hide the cup
behind my screen and determine
to leave it where its fizz will not
tempt me to become little bits
pillow. For if things are inside
me, I become them. And that is
what a self is: an envelope stuffed
with letters, trying to communicate
love and friendship and regret and
memory and every dead cell sloughed
away and scattered like a pillow in this
sun's fecund swirl. We photos have
been synthesized, and we will hear
our own minds toil forward, like
a simile in heat, growing tentacles
toward the brick of our desires,
laid down and exposed by the
remaking of this down self town.
Roman Ryan 