There are parts of this country where a fly could live forever
Scars like bookmarks just to read and remember
Like dog-eared pages in a frail book with a frail spine in a frail house
Like dusty words inside your mouth.

There's cadence in these pages.

There are parts of this country where I can't die fast enough
Every mile another novel punctuated in my blood
Thesis statements embedded in my flesh
This argument lays me to rest.

There's cadence in these pages.

We can measure the ephemery,
hands on flesh, muscle memory.
There's a story in every wrinkle; a map in every fold.
Fingerprints are like crow's feet poems.
A fracture, a bone breaks.
A knuckle cracks like pen to page.
Like ice across a brittle lake.
The tachometer's a metronome,
a typewriters tempo. Lays black ink into bone, a typewriters tempo.