why does your ghost weaken me when I don't even believe in it? why do I ache more after Klonopin and ice packs than before? how would any answer you avoided, articulating blank space and bleak dreams, unspoken, yet, aware of the ephemeral life span of the sun and every tear and bruise from genocides all the way to flirt-induced nudges, help our sinking ship fly? there's so much pain that our brains could flip on their backs, take a picture, and lose the ability to sort out the original prints from what may actually matter.

you saw everything, and then me, and then everything again. you're climbing trees that I wished you would have pushed me out of. you're shooting rifles that i wish most people would shoot me with, the rifles you jammed with a cork but now **** with enough force to cause ripples that hit the little broken bones inside of my chest.

for awhile, i think i forgot about bullets. whatever you feared brought me back to this bed and now the sunflowers in my eyes are metal, cold and lost. i'm still trying to chew them, but it is so ******* painful that my vertebrae can't stand each others' company.

i'm so far off of the third rail i think that some electricity might do my head some good.
i am a blind lamp post.
i am a diving board made of bricks.
i am gum, chewed.
i am waiting for an eighteen-wheeler in a train station,
wishing velocities could combine to hit me
as hard as you did.