Nothing ever right after my mom died
Decay
Decline
Despair

She's buried in Toledo
But I haven't yet been to her grave
She lives inside of me
I still miss her every day

                   No words to pray.

Mother did you know I would
grow old alone?

That the crevices on my
face fell into the street

with used syllables?

Tomorrow you said
No
To my first boyfriend.

Mother did you know I
wouldn't care. Your scarred

breast
was not my fault.

The trail of your
Epithet does not hurt
As much as this

Old age
When you
tried to

sell me


Caroline Shank
12.24.2024

They call  me 24 watts
Just a little dim.
They like a bit of banter
My proper name is
Bill.
I Have a sister
She likes to eat cake
Her name is
Victoria Sponge
And is skinny as
A shovel.
My brother Jack
Lived in a box
When you took
The lid off
He stayed
where he was.
We all had the
same mother
But had different dads
Mum just liked a change
We’re happy about this.

We usually say "step into the light"
when there's nothing but night
but do we say "step into the night"
when the light is so bright that it
not only blinds but burns out our eyes?

When extremist's play their games
to blind our sensitive eyes
it doesn't matter if they're
using darkness or light

It's all the same if you're snowblind
or just left alone in the dark
whether it's viral or bacterial
it's still an infection

Feeling our way in the heavy black
air – too thick to breathe
fumbling around in the light
gray
air -- too thin to breathe

Caught in the loop of groping
the walls of our minds
in twilight
struggling to refocus in moonlight
then so exhausted by daybreak
that we sleep it all off until dusk

Too much darkness
Too much light
Too much cold
Too much heat
Too much pleasure
Too much pain
Too much sunshine
Too much rain
You can have too little
or too much of anything.

You call me your dog,
your *****, your fool,
hurling words like stones
to shatter my heart.

I wag my tail anyway,
smiling through trembling lips,
fetching scraps of kindness
from the shadow of your hands.

You call me useless,
a beast beyond learning,
but I only want to please you—
to sit, to stay, to love.

Even as you turn away,
your voice cracking the whip,
I crawl through every wound,
bearing the weight of your name
like a leash around my soul.

For to be your dog
is still to be near you,
and I, the fool,
would bleed to feel you call me mine.

there’s these words
that we used to whisper in secret
words that we claimed to be ours
now I find myself haunted by them
they are just words after all
words that used to be meaningless
before they found you
words that take me back in time
to a place where I loved you