I bought a slingshot
from a cartoon ad
at the back of my comic book.

I made a target
from a piece of wood
and it kinda looks like a person.

I collected rocks
from the school
but only the ones that are sharp.

I waited for the mail
with Mrs. Kliven next door
whose son is in the military.

I got my slingshot
from the ad in the book
and all my rocks fit in it just right.

The apocalypse,
I think, will smell
like peppermint
essential oils,

a lover’s
deodorant,
and organic
lemon soap.

It will smell fearful,
a bluff for
gentle, winding fingers
in a flurry of youth.

It will smell strong,
a stench that you
breathed in slowly when
your neck was buried in it.

It will smell filthy,
accompanied with the
crunch of insect shells
that sends the others running.

The apocalypse,
I think, will smell
fresh and clean and
as if it’s only yours.

So how is it,
do you think,
that after time has passed,
however long that
“x”
stands for,
that we will be?
That you will be?

That I will be?

Because darling
I’m afraid of what
will change
from all of this.
From us.
From you.

From me.

Change is important
and beautiful
sometimes.
I know this.
But I am allowed
to fear the unknown
and I am more than
expected
to fear nothingness.

Are you sure?
You may want to
reconsider your
response.
I hope you used pencil,
and I am standing by
with an eraser.

I am a menace.
Scuttling between paper leaves
and doors. I can’t tell
which ones are unlocked.
My clattering legs will
skitter across your countertop,
and I have felt so small.
I have been out of sight
longer than I’ve been alive
and I knock your dishes
onto the under-grown floor.
The tinkling of porcelain
is my alarm clock.
I bounce off the fine china,
my arms stretched around me,
and I wonder how
you could miss all these pieces.
My hands are too small
to cause such destruction.
But my hands can reach
much further than yours.
So I slide myself between cracks.
I become a line,
another crack,
and I bring you the slivers.
Wedged between the tiles
and glittering from termite holes.
I bring you the glue
and my sickly face blushes
from embarrassment
and apologies.
I am learning what good
my hands can do
as I bandage and kiss
your poor, ****** fingertips.

In my hopeless fantasies,
we’d run into each other
on the street somewhere
with a bar in walking distance, maybe,
but I can’t. Really, I can’t.
It’s nothing against you,
really it’s not.
I’d love to find you one day
sitting across from me
on the late train home
or inside my box of
sugar-free cereal that will
help my heart or whatever.
They say a watched *** never boils
and I’m not sure I’ve taken my eyes off you.
It’s not fair to you. Really, it’s not.
Maybe you’ll get this when we meet
in however many years
when the puddles are too small
to drown in. And maybe you
learned how to swim.
Can you teach me?
Can you tell me where you’ve been?
Who you’ve loved?
Tell me the stories you never were able to.
I’ll know them by heart, better than my own.
Tell them without a microphone.
Without an earpiece.
Without your audience listening.
An empty theater clinging to your life,
a raft they never were sent.
A new memory to crave.
A chaser to a burning shot.
The shot itself.
Are you a performer or a teacher?
Standing in front of a tuplet crowd,
the audience whispering answers to questions
that the back of the room
hasn’t even reached yet.
Those chapters were ripped from their books.

We sunk into barrels that smelled
almost too strongly of wine
that was almost too old. The grapes
they were made of sat squished
between our toes.
We weren’t wrong anymore.
Nobody was wrong anymore
and it was being right
in the thick of it that made us so strong.
Our car used to be blue, we think.
It’s turned into a sickly orange
but at least it matches the sky.
We look for pictures in the cloudy
bumps of the metal.
There’s never anything left in the stores
except Scrub Daddy brand sponges
and glimpses of Mr. Clean’s face.
Nobody needs to bleach their bathtub anymore.
They’re all yellow. We try to guess
what kind of fruit lies beneath that
shivering hunk of mold.
I’d always wondered if something that was burnt
could burn more. “I think that
it depends on how burnt it got the first time,”
you say as you peel off the charred top layer,
“and on how you try to shake it off.”
We’re both nodding as the minnows
nip our toes, and prove to us that maybe
we aren’t the only ones with too many mouths.

Those words are for something else.
For someone else
Long ago.
But I suppose they work
For this
Too.

My words are for this.
For you
Right now.
But I suppose they work
For someone else
In another time.
If you want.

Because we always
Will miss each other.
Humanity.
We always just barely
Miss each other.
And that, my friend
Is okay.

Because our job
In this universe
Is to find each other
Again.
To see our faces
Smiling across
The cosmos.

And that’s when
The dazed feeling
Of ultimate joy
And relief comes in.
When we see
A dream
Come to life.

Finally.