take nothing of this

Function is the question of self: my job is to build and so when I see these forests torn down, these streets laid waste, I am a loss.

There are also too many names: they gather in pools exchanging alleles while I stir them like honey in tea. CTCC, or some such nonsense. It is that they are too clever for me to scoop up. Or that the lens I use to observe is overly intense. The casting of light too soon.

And film lacks camera in the early hints of Winter: she never found her way onto my palette. I had thought her an eternal star. She was instead a falling leaf.

When there was a ring in my pocket for three days: titanium may be scratched, rope too quickly untethers itself. What would I have tied it to? There is no self but that I build. I have no fingers of my own.

Or how else have I typed these things to you, or to the blind web, or to a forgotten lot, having exchanged only electronically aided promises. Those may be kept in the aether, but not on this unsteady earth.

(It is not for you, but for myself, and if you should look in, I hope that you'll smile that my tips make words, finally, again, and take nothing of this for yourself)