Prelude to Intimacy

By Royce

5 A few steps from your apartment door, bathed

in lucid porch light amber, I had an epiphany,

a precision of vision not unlike the clarity of

the man on the gallows right as the spring door

pops open and the rope begins to choke.

4 Knowing that yes this is going to happen,

authenticity beginning in wisdom but ending

in a grunt, twisting until lust is asphyxiated 

and chests no longer bump into breaths.

3 Fumbling for your keys, like grandma looking

for her puzzle pieces, part of me just wants to

leave and avoid regiments of redundancy.

2 Now just meat abandoned by meat,

communicated by outbursts of apathy.

1 Clothing sheared, only quarks remain.

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