the code of separation

By: Katie Stanos

7 november 2017 (sight)

your veiny, wan feet/expansion/between you/the floorboards/creation of

     space

smacking the granite countertop breaks

     infinity they say

they said/stare into the threads of your black sweatshirt/the threads have threads and those

threads have threads/and so on



22 march 2018 (arrival)

everything/possible and imaginable was lived/call it the

     10th dimension

dimensions of your cheekbones underneath the glow of the streetlights

     suspended in reality

your image/an echo of my first and last breath

your image/a compilation of lights strung in time



10 august 2018 (dream)

floating in the eagle nebula/you sighed/into the dark abyss/it goes nowhere/silly

     you can’t speak in space/space can’t speak



27 october 2018 (revelation)

we truly never/touched/space between us will never stop growing/even/when I clutched your

cold hands/from kilometers to decimeters to attometers/and so on

     infinite decimals creating a code of separation



8 november 2018 (splice)

canyons separating your skin/little fragments of you/the pieces get smaller/smaller/smaller

until/there is nothing left/but/the shadow of your arm on the bedsheet

     i bite my tongue in fear



4 december 2018 (hesitation)

i told you/sometimes the cosmos we see doesn’t exist anyone/it’s just the

     light from the explosion

hasn’t come to us/yet/not knowing/“it’s over”/until/very much over

     my consciousness implodes at the thought



23 december 2018 (departure)

the night you went to the eagle nebula/i pulled my car into your driveway/smacked the hood of

my car/one last try/i thought/one last try



to break infinity after all