i take everything like it’s a
song, and then a movie, and then a song again.
and then a medicinal textbook: terrifying, and terrifyingly true, and it says
Donate your stomach to the cause! Donate your lungs, your eyes. Donate your heart.
scooped out melon-ball and piled into the back
of the ambulance, off to
greener pastures or
cleaner emergency rooms.
sorry about the ambulance. sorry about the
sad stories and the empty ones.
the brittle voice and shaking hands.
there’s much more to apologize for but
i am in a different place,
birds in churches and
hardware stores.
i tied my tether tightly,
looked ahead,
he said
Be careful.
and i didn’t know how to tell him,
didn’t know how to explain
any of it, so i just let the tape run backwards.
there’s that play that ends the way it begins:
I went all the way around the world!
"for you" is implicit. "for you" is a message whispered in the dark,
orpheus at the yawning mouth of hell,
I’d do anything.
how far into darkness would you tread
to give someone else light?
i am burning up with it, i cannot bear it any longer.
i know you’re out there
turn your flashlights on. come find me.

maybe i am stupid.
maybe the
umbrella didn’t keep anything up, or out,
and the rain came under and the ground hit hard
but i would always
climb right back up the cliff anyway.
look in a mirror—
that’s you, or it was, once,
and wasn’t everything so much better, then?
warmer beds and
cleaner fingernails.
they cleared out those cliffs to make
condos, but
i’m just happy people are living here.
i say i love you and i mean it.
i say i love you and it means
something else entirely.
i stumble out of the forest and
onto the highway, covered in blood,
hands slipping over the steel dividers,
i say they
dragged me into the woods and tried to **** me
and that is exactly what i mean to say but
this time nobody can hear me,
so i go home.
would it be so difficult?
i’m slamming my fists down on the ice,
desperate heart overcompensating
but the ice will not shatter,
and my fingers bleed.
is it over? at once it is and isn’t,
but it’s too late for me, anyway.
i live in a state of biding my time, of
want so powerful i think it might **** me.
i drive past the cliff. i drive past the condos.
i see ghosts, now.
aren’t i something?