I don't motivate myself to write. I force myself to write because it is the only thing that makes me feel purposeful. I write because there are things in life that need to be told and until I have told them enough times, in a necessary amount of ways, I will not have carved the space required for what is to come after me, naturally.

I see the pattern of branches & twigs across the veins of your arm. You told me of the raging clouds, storms awaiting to crash, prowling your thighs. How mounds of flesh become lands to call home, once you brought them close enough to your face. How my irises were petals, my optical nerves the stem to a flower I did not know how to water. "It's what you pour into your eyes, Malcolm." You paused. You noticed the way my left eyebrow rose, refraining the other. You told me of the words we use to shame ourselves out of awakening to our nature. We laughed.

I see the pattern of branches, how they weave themselves one around another, like lovers scared to lose themselves in the wind, forgetting of the roots they share. We didn't move. Our gazes alone danced in a room with only your voice for music. Time doesn't matter when you have enough of it.

Cracks on the skin.
Lightning strikes.
The Foam of the Milky Way.
Clouds of milk in coffee.
Nerves in your eyes when you smoke.
A photo of the known universe.
The way rocks erode.
Bone fractures.

Now it's 4 in the morning.

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"And you thought consciousness came out of an unconscious universe."
But what to make of it?

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You held all the answers in the weight of your breath.
Yet, the world wasn't the child of a question.