The floor is slanted. I can tell because this edge refuses pooling. The smell of lavender: white walls, white curtains, white cream in a white tub, the whole room bleached and waiting. I could tell you I was testing words against the whites, and I was: here, lather. There, lathe. This time: steel wool wearing down. All removal. But there was something about this—preponderance of monochromes—that sent me into a rage. I was rubbing soap into a washcloth, whipping solids into foam the way I want to beat you. Is that so bad? It’s just that these are words I touch.
          Preponderance of monochromes. You would say this, your hushed tone slicing precisely the silhouette of your appreciation, wending and dawdling the blade. And it’s true: I too am held by preponderances, by O, loam, by searing lace of loss, and I quicken at my own making. But there is a place for this. It’s not that I don’t marvel. It’s that I smell something thick and wispy in you that wastes motion.

~

          Sometimes, running, I lose my will to write. I stay close to the ground, silent, speeding and graced with sweat. At times like these there is just going.
          I know I’m wrong. You say to me hydraulics of loss and I hear what waste is. I’m ashamed, dumb, a muteness dazed and tucked. But this tub is filling and my skin is worn. I’ll sit here for a while until there’s nothing on my plate.