Adventurers travel
to places where they could shoot themselves and
have it mean something – wait for
steel-toe boots and whimpering floorboards to remove a gun

from the kitchen sink, the tile is as green as
moss statues in pool water
and the caulking is about to be dyed red.

I follow tracks, the pads of my feet. I want to be one
of them – steal a rusted van
with shotgun shells in the passenger seat, safety uncocked.
A home for the only things I care about
has no door. Squirrels

carried it away in a drought, bad men lit a wildfire,
birds stay safe in eggs that never hatched
hanging by spider webs in someone’s daughter’s room –
her hair remains in the velcro of a teddy bear.

She is the only ghost – everyone
else’s corpse had some reason or another to stay here.
I see ashes in a skull, I smell **** on the center of girl palms
old blood used to keep eyes glued open,
mine holds dolls to
my wounds, my emptiness fuses plastic hair to me.

Almost little pillows of ravioli
bloated bellies, frayed skin, so white that morning
cannot detect us – in death, pimples
might pop like balloons, and we get left to look beautiful for
for the next person who wanders along.