#fax
the ceiling fan spins like a jury deliberating
over the crime of my birth
each blade a verdict, each rotation a mistrial.
i swallowed a payphone once,
just to hear the dial tone echo in my ribs.
it still rings when i lie too still.
there’s a cassette lodged in my throat,
rewinding the moment you said
“this isn’t a rescue, it’s a rerun.”
the walls are made of expired prescriptions
and the wallpaper peels like scabs
from a wound that never learned its name.
i tried to alphabetize my regrets
but they keep filing themselves under “miscellaneous.”
the mattress remembers more than i do
its springs hum elegies for limbs
that forgot how to tremble.
i saw a man selling nostalgia in ziplock bags
outside the ruins of a blockbuster.
he offered me a discount
if i promised not to feel anything.
my veins are traffic reports from cities
that no longer exist.
gridlock in the left atrium.
detour through the spleen.
you once said
“pain is just a poorly translated metaphor,”
but i think it’s a fax machine
still printing out apologies
from a decade that never arrived.
Oct 22, 2025
Oct 22, 2025 at 9:53 PM UTC