synthesis

i have to stay up all night and i don't know up from down.

_____

Do you remember the days of those long and sweaty sentences, the ones that you could feel moistening that angular patch of flesh behind your knee, the ink pooling there as in a basin, before cascading over calf, coiling post-coitusly at our ankles? Those days of the sturdy, albeit statedly sweaty, knees. Those days of the robust sentences, razed from the challenge of brevity instead of uselessly encumbered upon each other as a glass full of paper clips. Those days of the stout coffee cups, raised to health by smiles, instead of mandated to stave off the fiery-eyed mares of sleep. Do you remember the cold on our faces? The trees in the strobe flash (and the red felt pen on the developed frame)? Soon, we will fly, on planes, in skies, but the jittery passing of time induces fevers, unequivocally and without the cosmic tones of apology.