Every week
you slide out of your skin.
Frozen in the strobe light
there is
discarded upon the ground
the smoking husk
of self conscious 
self awareness.
We look for ways out
that traverse the uncomfortable echo
of the world that made us.
We look for connections
in hungry ghosts
and hungry strangers.
We find and lose again
the self beneath the sound. 

When I unwound the cables
I forgot what I would lose.
Last night, with cracked, dry lips
I dreamed I drank you empty
all the starlight from your skin
leaking out
through the bit of black ribbon
tied around your neck,
like a wound or a wish for slumber,
pooling and splashing
inside your princess gown.
Now the vision of you rides me
distorts and distracts, 
cannot be found again
is relentlessly difficult
to summon or subdue
and so I see the hidden cost
of unwinding things at all.
Last night, with cracked, dry lips
I spoke your name in solitude,
drank ghosts,
blacked out,
and cannot decide
if that invocation 
was inappropriate
or deepest praise 
blushing and unheard.