in off-white rooms
i spend mornings pulling back the fat from  my cheeks,  
pressing down rice with the back of my fork,
creating rituals to blunt the sharpest edges of my future.  

i pretend to live for the little reliefs,  
days too cold for thinking.  

strip for warm water’s eyes,
consider ways to close the broken zippers of my body,  
shake off my messier dreams,  
dirty, greenish films built to press sand into the cracks of my years.

the pigeons pick at me,  
there has never been a pleasant thing
i haven’t needed,
a person i could live without.

i want to taste a healthy tongue,  
to be promised something small and  cloudless.  

i made a habit of pointing out every
half-interesting tree,  
every bird’s nest,  
give the impression i can see further than
a few centimeters in front of me,  
but the eyes of my heart stay  
glued to the ground.  

i am not ambitious enough to write  
outside of my body,  
i stick with the bile and the burn.

i wait for the pavement to open,  
a clean split through berlin’s suburbs,  
i wait to be bitten  
in a way i will understand.

the too-bright sky spins with shame’s  momentum,  
and still i leave my curtains open through
the night