I’ve been tiptoeing around
since your last transfiguring act
of opalescent quivering taxidermy
- a young lioness with her cub –

and I’ve been growing butterflies under my skin
and moss on my shoulders

are the days of magic hush
entirely scarce or quite over?

true, true,
I am a hoarder of half-feelings
crocheting Escher bonnets on a corridor,
a slightly erratic glitch or 404,
a cat-in-the-box
- both dead and alive –
and a random pillar of salt
- all in one

but I’m not writing odes or ballads,
just transcribing this elusive indivisible prana
craving momentum
to ask a question that lingers:
did you make it home
through the long night?