If you find yourself
concerned with the brevity of things,
the temporal nature of biology,
(as one often does
while lying awake,
swimming in the bluish sublayer of thought
nestled deep in the mind's eye
suspended aimlessly
between unconciousness and cognition,
sorting through
glimpses of the farthest reaches of our nature)

if you find yourself
lost in the scattered events that we are
subject to assimilate into memory
before surrendering them
and our perception into the void,
like letters to the fire
know this:

a moving heart
is the decisive divider
between us and the squirrels
but the space that we share
the compost, the brick, and the fur,
the glances daringly held,
the things reserved for our deepest comfort,
and alas,
the bodies
that we cannot recall bargaining for-
are of course fleeting

and in defeat
a gasp
and the soul that has propelled us thus far
is exhaled.