i lie awake and chart stars on my ceiling
in my head is a picture of an autistic boy
drowning kittens in the creek behind his house
in southern illinois where my father was from
and little girls left in poppy fields
covered in pollen for the bees to collect
and what do you say to the dead girl
when she complains that she is haunted
and what to do when you feel your bones creak
like a floorboard in the house that you grew up in
and the poison you sucked from his wounds
sits in your stomach like lead weight
tied to a kittens neck and thrown into the river