Howard Firkin
Paralysis is still the teddy bear
I cuddle, huddled in the urined sheets
of night, night featureless where comfort meets
its absence, thought meets terror, love despair,
where logic leads to step-by-step confusion.
I think of you and her and her and me:
the pronoun tangle of comparative
analysis, the shattered narrative
of lives lived in their odd asymmetry.
I think of you and come to no conclusion.
Paralysis cannot conclude, instead
its slow hyphae expand and clog the brain
and build a mass congealing as it spreads,
as slow as fungus but as sure as pain.
I cuddle, huddled in the urined sheets
of night, night featureless where comfort meets
its absence, thought meets terror, love despair,
where logic leads to step-by-step confusion.
I think of you and her and her and me:
the pronoun tangle of comparative
analysis, the shattered narrative
of lives lived in their odd asymmetry.
I think of you and come to no conclusion.
Paralysis cannot conclude, instead
its slow hyphae expand and clog the brain
and build a mass congealing as it spreads,
as slow as fungus but as sure as pain.