my stomach muscles retract bruises on the beginnings of my ribs i can’t fight the deafening freight train engine blowing my hair wildly as i try to cross the tracks barbed wire enclosing me in the factories around me crashing and burning i think i saw the devil in the train’s headlights. i can’t make up for lost times caught in the convenient current washing my body like an entity that doesn’t deserve to be cleansed the train horn is ear-piercing like off-key violins in a symphony the blood pumping quickly my redundant diction i ask for permission from conductors and fakers and liars and schemers and apparently they’re all good people. i deserve to be lost in the wide expanse of a generation i can’t accept. shattered promises and limbs sprawled out on the train yards as the stopping vehicles sound off their alarms i am alarmed but i am stapled to the tracks by a woman who told me that it’s not that hard to overcome your fears how do you feel now with me bleeding out of my eye sockets all over your precious property?
tests, essays, and stress. all sound like freight train engines roaring in my head. 1/5/23