It’s come to this. Since last February I haven’t
touched you or anyone, save for my mechanic,
but that was by accident and in March and it
was only a handshake because I forgot he could
kill me without meaning to and, besides, I’ve known
him since junior high school. These days, I take
a couple of aspirin every morning just for good
luck. I go for one walk, sometimes two, daily,
just for research’s sake. Just to see, like some
crystalline anthropologist from the future, if
the present is like I imagine it or remember it
from my incessant apartment. I won’t come home
(sometimes I have to walk for miles. Once, a whole
day) until I’m convinced I’m not some simulacrum
(“Please, dog,” I’ve said aloud on walks, “bite my leg,
go for it. I need evidence”), part of some teenager’s
avatar on a campaign, wandering in the desert, banking
on the biblical: that doing so leads to the promised land,
or at least someplace worth selling or invading. So,
should I meet you on the street, after all of this (and “if”)
is over, and I hug you, I’ll not only be doing so too hard;
I will be trying to crush you before you can leave me again.