"In the selected letters and smell of soaped skin, there" by Tony Mancus

we are grab-assing and tired. The color this night oncewas when young could not be replicated. Takeany brush. The words go missing, too.Essentially a man-made disaster, all acts of memory.The stars fall down and don't get back up—oh how hard the engineer assigned to setthe pattern back in the sky has to wonder.The color the night was once: young and limber. We arethere inside it, fighting sleep off with every inchof our bored bodies. They finally refuseto let us last awake. We are leftin this dream to waste time and watch the bats—darker spots within the darkness—dip and swerveto touch the face of the water. Another formof resistance there in our shutting eyesmars the idea of never. To wake in the morningand bathe in the lake, a newcategory of life strapped there onto our wet skulls.