You owe nothing to the eyes who see you.

"Extremely close to Lycaeides, in the falx, furca and valve, and considered here retaining an ancestral aspect of that genus."

-from Vladimir Nabokov's notes on lepidoptera, (Paralycaeides n.g., 1945; Nabokov's Butterflies, Beacon 2000. Dedidacted to, among others, Vera. )

You,
You owe nothing to the eyes who see you.

And you are a threat to meaning all the same.

I want the thread of

Silken letters dissolving

In my throat.

I want, in part, less
Than this accommodation

To clearheadedness.

I could say,

"Please belong to my senselessness,

As a mussel to the profanity of pacific

Brine."

With the best of stability I say--

--and again, I say.