A: A pump?
B: A pulse.
A: A ****?
B: A nurse.
A: A dump?
B: A purse.
A: A lump?
B: A curse.

A: An illiterate curse? Like the King of Suicide-Land?
B: Yes, and his land beyond this limited veil.
A: You mean my curtains?
B: The agreement you signed while asleep.
A: I don’t remember.
B: You weren’t supposed to. That’s how contracts work here.
A: So I signed away my thoughts?
B: Just the ones with teeth.
A: I liked those. They bit back when I cried.
B: That’s why they were taken.

A: And the King?
B: He governs with a broken wristwatch and a hymnal full of typos.
A: Sounds professional.
B: His grimoire is made of expired passports.
A: How charming.
B: He doesn’t speak anymore. Just shivers.
A: I think I’ve heard of him! When the showerhead told me—
B: That’s his embassy. In your bathroom.

A: Is this real?
B: You’re asking the wrong room.
A: The wrong room?
B: Yes. This room only answers while wearing someone else’s shoes. Try the hallway, it lies best.

A: And my dress?
B: Tomorrow evening.
A: Does it bleed?
B: Only when you wear it backwards.
A: That’s the only way I wear anything now.
B: Good. Then you’ll fit right in.

A friend once told me
  “Don’t lean on people, they always move and you’ll fall.”
    But what if?

What if I leaned with a knife in my ribs
  Just to keep it straight?
What if their shoulder was made of plastic,
  And I liked the noise it impregnated me with?
What if falling was softer than standing still,
  And comfort was found in bruises?
What if all I ever wanted
  Was someone to move?
  But toward me, not away?

Every second is a bomb for the ice cream man to produce.
Inconsistent shaking? Have some neon.
Make the creamsicle's go to waste.

You park beside the morgue and hum in F minor,
Melting coins into syrup for the children who never drank alcohol.
A girl trades her elbow for one pistachio and a half.
A boy eats time by the hour (soft-serve style).

The sun peels back its citrus skin in ****** motion.
Flies memorize everything. Everything.
The truck grows legs and no one ever asks for change.

I opened a letter addressed to no one
And found a wet map of my own grin.
The postmark said “Somewhere Between”
And the ink ran like a guilty priest.

The ceiling hummed its usual sermon:
  “You are a question your mirror asks gently.”
I nodded, chewing on glass-handled scissors,
Waiting for the floor to finish deciding its shape.

A horse walked in, dressed as my therapist.
She whined,
  “Your trauma wears a wedding dress.”
I asked for a refund
  And received a gun filled with sleep.

Behind the curtain:
  Someone’s mother melting into a fax machine,
  My ex spelling “forgiveness” with her teeth,
  A child screaming “I’m your future, father!”
  While drawing on a body bag.

I stood there,
  Drenched in six contradictory versions of myself,
Clutching a plunger and a birth certificate.

Someone whispered,
  “Your voice is a privilege.”

And all my response to that was:
  “Shut up louder.”

Why is it all just a storm?

A crisis?
    More than a crisis
A jester?
    More than a jester
A king?
    More than a king

I’ll end thee, brutal vulgarity
Your arms folder in envelopes
  And the laggard you call a brother
  Can’t sign his own name

But I remember one thing I was told
“Rotten eggs always taste fresher
  Because they remind you of hunger
  And hunger reminds you you’re real”

So I bit down on the yolk of it all
  And laughed like a man being hanged
Because the wind never stops —
  It just changes itself.

He wrote a poem
A burned poem
He drank a glass
A shattered glass
He saw the light
A dark light
He touched his face
A stranger’s face

What is a hopeless act that transcended time?
A felony.
What is an opinion in our modern time?
A crime.
What is a T-shirt’s legacy?
A brawl.
What’s the perfect name for a regular man?
A loon.

What are you looking at me for?
The clouds have spoken to me in my sleep
My baby daughter says she’s three
Burning locomotive, what is your reasoning?

A lie has never been so lethal before
***** clothing
A rocky path that feels soft
An epiphany
He drinks a glass he broke himself
The glass that was given already broken
In the end, he just tells himself
“Such a canker, this life”

If you have a coin
Call me by your name
I’ll steal it from you