Illustration by Shaina Cohen

Vivid blue compulsion, I am malarial inside of you: a critical light swimming muggily
at the border, as if inside a sapphire, tumbled and uncut. Your precise wondering

has inverted my historical weather, and now look, I am a vegetal atlas performing
critical housework in the sun. That is how I am for you,

multiplying and soft on a black bowler, while you wander tautly
toward half open doors, which I push wide. Tethers of ink, milky

on hollow surfaces, and glazed loons to admire. And in the stairwell,
a green and samaritan light shuns ascension.