"Elysium is as far as to..."

Then we’re lying on the bed, in our clothes, in the overcast, after he has had the cyst removed from his knuckle, now bulbous with lattice bandage. It was like a wisdom tooth growing up out of his joint, they cut it out and cut its long roots out. He lies on his side, I lie on my back, he keeps the hand elevated on my breast. Between us we have so many doctors now, maybe a dozen. He’s asked me to tell him, again, what a simile is, and why I never use a metaphor— because for so long I had thought that they were crazy. But I am sane as a level, sane as the level bubble in its greenish indoor pool. I am sane as a scissors, sane as a sieve, sane as a scales, sane as a gyroscope, sane as an ellipsis, sane as orgasm, sane as every stage of it: aura, surge, thrust, first stage rocket, second stage rocket, third stage rocket, fourth, rest, begin-again, fifth. He rests, he sleeps, the window shade beyond him is closed, its mild right-angle hills and valleys like ripples in water, little doll-house syncline anticline syncline. We talk about my not writing—my voice went woggle woggle as I said, “I need a friend, in you, about this,” and he said, “I’ll be your friend.” Now he dreams. I am sane as a friend, sane as a dream.