FLVCTVAT NEC MERGITVR

5AM paris, pigalle red-light.
five youths, too hunched and too high,
but o i feel invincible in this fortress
built of bumbags, tiny cigarette fires,
and feet patting frozen cement,
toes on the pulse of this city, fingers
like quick slivers of moonlight.

Our fingers stay afloat albeit briefly on the small arctic keys.

(the fingers are heavy, unnatural)

They must do their dance of death, leaping from one to another in succession, until we are spent, brows knotted, gasping for breath. And finally- many or some of- the sentences safely cross to the vast other side (the ones that do not make it float up from the cracks in the arctic ice and haunt our fingertips), where the grass is greener because we do this until it is pretty,

until it is clever,

until it is sincere,

until we smile, laugh, or ugh,

until we are spent, brows knotted, gasping for breath,

until it resembles knives.

"When two kisses kiss, it's like two tigers talking about infinity with their teeth."