We recognize each other in a crowd,
with our forcefields of dark matter pulsing
inside hastily draped crime scene tape:
yellow and black
like the skins of dead hornets
warning you we’re poisonous.
We are the ones who can’t be touched.
Even the breeze is dangerous.
A hug, a touch on the hand
is a cellar door swung open,
a dirt floor to land on.
We are the ones who carry snakes
in our veins and fire in our brains
taking in too much,
camouflaged in the brush,
stopped until they startle us.
We recognize each other in a crowd
by the badly masked scent
of spent pyrotechnics,
electric storms and solar flares
and we just know:
here’s someone at home
with compulsion,
a reptilian precision
within the rules of the game
so we blow smoke rings
around the hedges of convention,
touching plasma,
trading venom—
exploring dark basements together
looking for things to burn.
© Psyche Marks 2019