I was always the kind of kid who liked to fix things
I bought myself a pink hammer when I was 8 years old
and I liked to “fix” things with it.
turns out I wasn’t all that good at fixing and I
mostly just broke things.
nobody really had a problem with it until
I broke myself and then
fix yourself!
they scream
go! nail yourself back together!
but all I really feel like doing is sawing myself in half.
I could see myself failing to fix anything,
watching helplessly with my pink hammer while they
screamed loudly, endlessly
fix yourself fix yourself fix yourself fixyourselffixyourselffixyourselffixyourself
they tried everything.
they took pliers and pried open my brain they
measured and remeasured my sanity with tape and pills
that looked suspiciously like
the bubble in those bars you use to make sure something is even
my mother and father wore safety glasses as i took an axe
to my sense of self and buried it with
a shovel bigger than the three of us
“she’s a bit of a fixer-upper” they say
as if they’re selling a house
they try to fix me up, gorilla glue me together but
it’s too little, too late
I sawed myself in half and there’s
no fixing this one.

When conversations lull,
or I’m left alone with myself,
(or unexplained shivers
puppet my shoulders)
I think of writing the perfect poem.

I have so many wonderful ideas
that have all been thought
but were too messy—
and they would all be rethought
until they were polished;
until they were spotless;
until they were blacksmithed
and welded and tallied and measured and remeasured and immaculate.
Then I would have written
a flawless poem.

But then again,
if someone (even me) wrote
the perfect poem,
it would be written.
And that would be that.