AD1685

AD1685/ Joshua Alan Sturgill

Friend, I thought I knew your face.
But today I found a flaw:
a small, significant distortion:
a mole
along your jaw.

Our friendship faltered suddenly.
Do I know you;
do you know me?
If old beliefs are unreliable,
then our whole history…?

I can be objective, cold,
suspicious to the hilt.
Don’t breathe a word
(don’t breathe at all) because
a system must be built

with scalpel, hammer,
microscope,
rejecting what I’ve heard or read.
I’ll analyze your chemicals.
I’ll catalogue your head

and move on to dissection,
to see your organs in a row.
Weights and lengths, reaction times
— statistics
are the only ways to know

— to know without illusion,
through reason, not through sense.
Friendship’s too much
mess and risk.
I want permanence.