paper

i have put up facades
and feigned a greater confidence than i could ever possess,
i have touched the poverty in lines of poetry
and tasted the perversion of lame stanzas. 

i have put less thought 
into greater things.


absorbing the warmth of smiling 
through facial osmosis
and
keening away carbon in short- and shallow breaths 




but 
i have never seen again what transpired  
when i watched 
the paper girl
fold herself into pieces of origami-like lovers as cold sheets of fragile fibers
carefully bent around
waxy parchment
she sailed around the room like a paper airplane,
thin, creased skymachine with wings bent back and nose weighted with all the promise 
of an old penny she might have found in her pants pocket