lives inside this lie:
 
heartbeats simply sync
up the body’s clock
 
and repeat in one
direction. Truth is,
 
like two boots in snow
retracing their tracks,
 
every ticker tip-
toes over ground once
 
covered, till each beat
flips to face what path
 
its tread and sprints home-
sick toward beginning—
 
marking, as comets
do, its pinnacle
 
by all it burns off
in turning, the skin
 
grown hot cooks layers
it forgot to shed,
 
till the flesh is lens
our blood pools under
 
like a stoplight sunk
inside the body—
 
a rewinding so
gaudy it blinds us
 
to the future, days
of which simply drift
 
away unnoticed,
beats we bargained off
 
for a less distant
dark and this thought, small
 
enough to carry:
between two unknown
 
points the shortest walk
is always the one
 
already traveled.