[agglomera]

Humidity. Humidity and nothing blue outside. Nothing blue outside and every surface brushed with dust. Juvenile cardinals look nothing like the energy their hollow bones and bounces show. I have a toothache, a book on research methods on a small piano bench, an empty coffee mug of double insulated glass, several light blue shop towels folded on a bone white plate, a particular shade of orange in an unrecognizable shape emerging with each blink in the corner of my eye, the tiny muscle stretched across my right tympanic membrane twitching to the sound of some large truck bed being either emptied or made full a block away, a chill in my right hand and unrepentant heat hovering about my left, the image of children in a faraway tent minutes before they’re made past tense, the word bodies written below six days of blood pressure readings, a knotted measuring tape beneath a stack of books, and the softening of denial, the softening of the wall between love and condemnation, a loosening brick I imagine could shatter a widening, wicked smile.