The Usurper and His Cronies take Communion by the River

[italiceyeball]

Incoherence at my heels. Have I lost faith? Isn't that what it takes to place words just so? Even a lukewarm faith, just enough to hold a letter in place long enough to finish the word, to pin the word(wings still twitching) to the page long enough to affix a period. To resist ellipses, to embrace the dash, to believe enough that a thought is worth finishing(as if there were resolution...) To cease analysis long enough to dodge disintegration-

I would take you through my process, Herr Doktor, but I fear your familiarity more than my disease.

I am a-frayed, in the small moments, in front of the mirror- and I am a dynamo, at large before the world. But I know myself at these poles- he shrinks or struts in measured steps, minces and leaps in predictable pirouettes. In between, in the real world(of course, of course) he piles up like a rumpled sheet-

My best quality- maybe my saving grace? A gentle shrug, not of ambivalence, but a surrender to my own incompetence, and a willingness to carry on as a deeply flawed vessel for- something, some bit of the ineffable- something better than my pantomime, some undeterminable truth-

And I believe that maybe
next time
I will be better at showing you.