Twelve and I'm unreachable
        what will be required of me

As in a dream, I am still a "nerve sculpture"

                      hair glitters in thirsty weather
               made lovely by ruthlessness

distinguished for extinguished         furnished for famished

formed increasingly from homespun
        and unlikeness to other things       

I still have my seventh-grade track shoes
why can't I hear myself being rather than making

Lao says be alive to difficulty. Being alive is difficulty. I'd rather be strangled than so awfully disappointed

but then I've never been strangled