If you can, picture. If you can't, invent the circumstances in which you can pretend you have seen the picture. Keys break into ideas all of the time, and the ideas change for being exposed to metal, air, the touch of skin. I can taste the words that come out of your mouth like an incense. For once, I'd like a picture instead of a flavor.

If you can, picture. Meeting on the isthmus. The answers are not in the key. The answers are not what happens. Those are consequences. The answer is yes, affection endures denial. The answer is yes, energetic footprints cover the sky. I learned in readings from the French renaissance that when Venus was deemed the satellite of love, the Moon was designated the satellite of chastity. Daphne was its patron saint, I think? A classic French name, anyway. Maybe another name that sounds like definition. Maybe one that sounds like desire. I haven't memorized them all. Mine is as classic as it gets--an ordinal, ornithological, cardinal north. Please let me be your north and if not then perhaps I am the initial confusion of the needle when you look at a compass. It shakes because you look at it. Shaking like it’s cold but it’s febrile. I know juxtapositions are cliché but thank you. Anyway. It doesn't go away, the key. Neither does the picture as long as I can help it.