I

am

holding

on

to a long thread.

Tense and lingering,

it strays

the distance between us—

and the more I pull, the less comes

rippling out of my heated hands,

fisted fingers that terrorize

the slippery thread with tickles

through and through these hands

that find all this much heavier

than expected.

Convulsing in air like blown glass,

it whitens the brown of my knuckles

that hold their bubbling red a secret

but with its million déjà vu

of my eruptions, disruptions

it never

lets me

 let go.