and in the morning my skin

is a murmur of incisions
that have a dried offering

nothing permanent
but the lie in my dream I once was

a tumbling deer hurled down the collegiate range

the larvae in the beak of a finch reciting its mating call

the bullet wound in my overgrootvader mining torturous

regret among the dead synapse, its tributary
once flecked wild
            terminated by white light—
                        a raising of hands swooned and swept

under spire.