momentary loss

Once, in a moment that lacks the requisite panache to label appropriately,

I felt the nourishing trickle of consciousness fall heavily away.

Breathing through an absent nose on a face, disjunctive and garbage laden,

the notion occurred that perhaps wakefulness is a sign of belonging,

a chorus line of motions perfectly in sync like puppets on a string.

Sure, we couldn’t be stuffed

                                                But we’d eaten.

                                                                        Couldn’t be rooted.

                                                                                                But wanted to.

The crashing of scraps and hormones and desires that falls away

from the sudden, vertical disappearance of awareness, the doona envelops this loss,

as a baby wraps itself around an iron toy that is comforting for imagination,

but we’re not the child and I cannot afford to get that confused again.

The surface of the mind as it slowly spirals down what feels like a sink, 
but, mate, isn’t anything like a pipe, is slippery under the touch of my hand.

Though oddly rough under the thumb of a tradie working long, expensive hours.

Sincerity, or a solid memory, was never a strong point, so perhaps

you didn’t happen.  Even if the warmth that fuels my feelings is absent

I’ll always reach for it until someone declares it’s over or something else

develops into focus for my whole state-of-being and holds tightly onto the drip drip

of the always perplexed thought of together that in this central moment

matters not a jot, not a sweet fuck all – this time and the last of my heart.