The letdown you feel when you discover
the character was only dreaming or
only deranged or only dead, the whole
scintillating phantasmagoria
collapsed–arbors, ships, and telegraphs
your mind with its delicate hammer nails
recognition at last of someone once
vaguely known or a terror circumscribed,
scribbled instructions to unearth and then
unwind the spaceship idling in a secret
tunnel with its hooded eyes, and yes, yes,
sympathy for the monkey now you know
only paint held everything together.