Before I lose my life in this town, I'm looking for a pebble
that smells like anything - the ocean, soil, you -  that shit.
Symptoms include an obsession with clocks and a dismissive anything
towards her, the bleak old buzzard who watches with gauze-eyed cataracts
as we walk by, - -we- menacing in white sneakers and suntan lotion - -  she -
has been so long above it all that there is no longer any difference between the declaration of independence
and a newspaper article that goes:

Everything was terrible and the people died,
but really she was just having a bad dream.
Really she's okay.
And it was all just make-believe,
and you feel kind of stupid for ever having cared at all.

And the pebble would be shaped like a clear, healthy lung
and burned into it, it would say,

I would follow you into the dark.

In sans serif font, flawless, nothing-eyed,
lining my palm like mouthful of pulpy orange crush,
only stinging where the cracks show, and through them come
the old theory that every night, the sun sets into the sea.
Raindrops don't always stain, do they?
It wouldn't be so bad
but it's Tuesday, and don't fucking tell me to hold my breath.
I've had to kill every minute from the moment you left.