I would like to

draw a line on one of your furrowed brows, and make a cut, a cut along your frown. I would like to trace that line.

It cannot be clean, this mess that's to be. You are not a task and if you were, I will never be able to complete you. Are you all straight lines, are we parallel lines? It cannot be so, or so my mind insists, insisting on softness even as I struggle--while feigning non-struggle--with the (imagined) resistance of your surfaces.

I steady my trembling hand; this fear is of my own making. This fear of you is of my own making. My fear is that of recognition: what if I end up seeing you, and yet end up only seeing you? I suspect I will; I am sure I will.

And so I wrap you up in haze, consign you to the shadows; I darken you with words like "cruel" and "lost". I look for safety in my own ignorance, or whatever bliss that's left of it.

I shut you out. I would like to.