Why are all the survivors of the needle's eye
nude, as if their lifethread had disrobed
rather than sewn them. Sans coat-fare,
we proceed it seems only to precede;
birth to burial, are not yet here.

But when did we first start embracing
the wakes of ourselves in each other rather
than each other? As the fruit falls
to hiatus us, its bloom spoiled by last year's cores.

Or the sun whose portrait rots in our pores,
those sweatbeads blurred in closeup but clear afar--
that pointillist pap, that hybrid suicide.

The face carefully tattooed around love's wounds
does not itself look injured.