girl in one glance

I spent all day following a bruise
on a pale bare thigh,

all day, every day,
over hills and down rivers,
at the bottom of the ocean and the center of a star,

beyond the day in the year of our lord,
during innocence and after the modern,
past the sentence through syntax,
onward towards preposition and allegory,
turning left at Form That Implicates Through Structure,

between the chased, the pursuer, the devil and the deep blue sea,
beyond haiku that silenced her with winter bells,
facing the sidewalk that glittered like a burst vessel of stars,

at taco johns with a chorusline of girls that chased me

to push experience through a lonely girl's bruise
that only comes together on paper.