She woke up
Red
Swollen eyes
Like she'd been in a fight with Ali

How?
This started the investigation
An interrogation of her long summer days

Alas
A few days before she was playing
She said
Out by the tree island in back

Laying on the ground
There she found
Her Adventure Stick

To poke and **** her enemies (brother) with
"It worked much better", she said
"With a garland of leaves wrapped around it"

Her father and I let out a collective sigh
He reminded her slightly
"Leaves of three, let them be."

I myself could only say
Looking at her puffy little face
"But you sure did have an adventure!"

When you die
You have to pick who dies next
To secure your place in heaven

That's why death
happens in threes.

My heart banged on my chest
Beat me from the inside out

It was angry
I tried to please it
Best I could
Old tricks didn't work

Something of you made me sob
My heart
finally calmed

The physical manifestation of my sadness
My drowning heart

Nothing we see here is real
It's all filtered

First through our eyes
Reflected light
Sending signals to the brain
Where an image is produced

Then we must perceive it
All of the thoughts and feelings
From years of life
Decide the reaction to what is seen

Nothing is objective
We're our own propaganda machine
Extinguishing what hurts
Letting in what's clean

Yet
Some people are so sure
In what they see
And feel

They can tell you
Exactly how it should be
And what was once here
What is real

You see different than what I see?
Sinful? Wrong?
Broken? Incomplete?

Repeat after me
All that you see is
All that you see
And that's got nothing to do with me

I am the cog that hits the cog in a great machine
I'm furthest from the source
Like Neptune

We're all waiting to die
Some of us just have more distractions than others

My eyes are beautiful, she says.
She must dig the haunted, empty look.

My smile is gorgeous, she says.
My tongue has felt those chips and nicks far too often to agree.

My arms look strong, she says.
I am surprised—she’s seen the scars.

My hands stir her, she says.
There is nothing elegant about them.

She loves me too, she says.
Even as we recall all the times I traumatized her.

She will never leave me, she says.
Dear God—that’s what I was afraid of.

She’d never do better than me, she says.
At that, I bite my tongue.

She doesn’t know what I see in her, she says.
And this, I think, is why we keep each other around.