Nineteen Sixty Five

Blushing light settles like gauze upon
the worn-smooth floor...
hangs suspended, condensed,
in the soft and foreign air:
many-winged insects
stretched across a raftered sky.
Here sings everything with nothing to lose:
here sings nothing, floorboards and shoes and
learning how to float is never easy
rounded calves picking up
sharp heels,
light caught, felt, held ransom
in necklaces and
rhinestones and
fingernail polish and
striking green eyes.
Youth is no object.
Time savored here is free--
feral--feckless--fresh--
fierce in the lingering twilight
pure and cynical and absolutely
Breathless.
This world belongs to her.
And whether these weary walls
realize it or not,
whether these intricately carved and courted people
realize it or not,
the fight has already been won.
The Swan spreads her wings.

Excerpt from a Letter to Nan, July 2011

It feels like time just slips away so quickly. All of a sudden it's time to sleep again, and I've hardly done anything. I feel like I live and move in an impossibly viscous liquid, while the rest of the world breezes through air. Time to breathe. But what am I breathing?