In this heat everything is pulsating. I can barely keep my hands from shaking in the beating sun, the pounding underneath my skin that lifts my belly up again. Those flowers are wilting. I put water in the basil jar. Its neighbor is a pile of cigarette ashes, next to millions of floating thoughts I cannot stay awake for.  No matter how bloodshot and distressed I'm willing to let myself appear. For now, there is the melting of the dirt into the floor, my hands grasping for peace before sinking unsatisfied to my sides. 

Some evil heavy thing stole into my body, stretching skin and organs to settle comfortably in the hollow forming. I know because it weighs down, in cohorts with the steel and cement, the subways the walkways the grays. Constant heaviness seeing me to a place where my eyelashes are seized, my lids separated by fingers belonging to the subjects of dreams, who only run off. What they leave me to contend with is a pool of sticking sweat and dozens of mosquito bites. So I will have to break the skin.