there has simply got to be  a freckle factory
hidden somewhere 'hind your ears  i swear
& when i find those smokestacks breathing
sunshine 'cross your sweet & every smile i
will apply to work there.

I am alright.
I have a face mask
nicotine stick
& a heating pad

I have lavender, in epsom salts
and healthy food & ****
and I am lucky
lucky
lucky,
I should tell myself I’m
lucky

I’m alright,
I will be fine
(and I am, guess,
most the time
besides
I am not going to die
and still have quite yet
so much time.

-


...i hear it,
even when it makes no sound.
it is so deeply hollow,
even Empty echoes 'round.

(and i'm so sure of all of this
because i hear it now.)



it is a disembodied pleading—
a guttural, deep shrieking. mercy
calls you from your being
as it all becomes too much.
i recall i, cold and lifeless,
watched (beside myself, despite this)
as i clumsily engaged in an
attempt to wake you up.



enough time dissociated,
we begin to wonder when
exactly, where exactly:
how does this all end?

ain't it so hard to find sometimes

-
one day the sun will blink out
and i won't be there.


:
my god is right now.
my hell is control.
my joy is devotion
and my grief is an absence;
maybe the hands of a clock,
quickly ticking
and unwilling to repeat itself.

;
my purpose is god,
desire is hell,
my love is my joy,
and that sun blinking out
without me is my grief.

-

imagine my surprise to see
a golden road, unfold, before me

where no path had been,
less had it leapt

with my every once-ashamed
and trepidatious
baby-step.



there are trees in the distance.


country-wide on either side.



and it's suddenly so bright? I adjust to the light,
blues and greens, to be sure; that is,
if I could see,
for the tears that could, might
source a new, fertile stream.


so I will start it, crawling;
grateful.
and I will take off running,
soon.