Can we trauma bond
over midnight photographs? Laugh-crying
through the dot matrix dates,
knuckle-clenching, fake family knee-slaps.
Why am I seven years old
and sketching knives? Maybe I’ll never know
—
it's the same cold that's never enough.
A tale as old as time.
When the whiskers are all plucked out,
I might as well be blind.
But every blurred memory
is shrapnel embedded in my brain.
I guess this is called learning.
Or is the black and gold lure spinning
just a distraction from the zero-sum game?