Degrees of Separation

If a heart lifts to the sky, and it does,
then what recoils? What do you recall?
the lipstick your four-year-old friend
insisted that you wear, the red cowgirl bandana
left on the floor because you cannot bend so far:

say this, or the swollen toes, the knees
red in their shallow dishes,
the neighbors' worry at
inadvertent trumpetings of pain
when you roll over in your sleep?

When I walk at night, pursued
by the close reasoning of the Moon,
how will I purge these from my thought:
the messages of fear and want,
letters delivered to me in the hope

that I might be the third or fourth or even fifth
degree of separation? I am not, I am not:
I am the seventh, eighth, ninth. I am
the dead-letter office of desire. Nothing
that comes to me

is going any farther.