"Consequences Upon Arrival (v)."
"Refuge is born in the decision to not die.
And to not fight either in that fatal schema anymore.
We arrived at a breathless edge.
An unfortunate relationship to the world.
Gnarling roots evacuated a verbal expression.
Survival void of expression that was yet impolite.
The explanations were acceptable and the desert
unstoppably green, still old feelings raised their eyes
from the dirt.
From the ongoing question, which brushed
our arms and velveteen breaths.
Rose the pain of knowing our hope remained intact.
Given a language to love us.
Balanced between a basic set of possibilities and our choice
at any moment to take a back way home.
Each said: That I have been so secluded.
I held defeat as my own.
Is the culminating authorial point.
Unnamed in occasions of inconsistent bruising.
Internally consequential terror.
Consequences never not in season.
At our fingertips.
On tap.
Unoccupied.
Romantically unengaged.
Sleepless against the wet Earth.
A lush-eyed animal looking forward with ragged breasts.
What happened after that.
Memories terminated before our private shelter
of consciousness.
Flesh sound over hoof over hand.
Marble in the gray-pink sky, an impression that carried no heat.
Though its promise was physical.
To be perfectly happy and not strangers to ourselves.
Its promise.
That it would find its way back somehow.
We gathered around simulations of the future.
Oily skin pulling away from the skull.
A tenderness looking back through crepuscular hours.
Is this the place?
The simulation of eating a meal together.
With tears in our eyes.
Carrying on.
Come now.
The question rises in everyone.
From the base of the neck the world opens, failed.
Receptive.
Just like that.
The territories we've left behind are all gone now.
The rain falls through them refracting light."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]