the three registers
We came in wanting. Wanting! Milk and warmth. Pale light and oceanic sound. It’s what got us to talking. We murmured our want, screamed it. Moved towards it, grasping. This is how we began to perceive distances. The far-away. That which is not in our own hands. Every twitch of the eyelid in the act of looking, gesturing around emptiness. We came in with austere bodies aching for abundance. You rambled on all fours in the backyard, doe-eyed and moist, a small traveler. On the path of ordinary lust. This means you are real. This means you are damned. Even the timid cannot go their entire lives without shouting and writhing from the force of it. One day you’ll look for another to pour your want into, and this will be more painful than you or I can imagine. But it will happen. Not once, not twice. But again and again, until all of the world escapes from your lungs.
