The Queen of Versailles gave me lessons
on scapegoating over tea, so tonight I lay down,
and Every Man steps right over me. From the ground, I can see
a squirrel bury a nut, but the future can’t be trusted to arrive.
Pat pat pat pat into the Earth:
I haven’t left my kitchen floor in weeks, but I have
a plan. Streetlights open up on every block: veins, saturating
anything around them. I dream of a step forward each moment,
and I will ask the questions that suffocate deep in my chest,
the ones that I cough up when I’m alone: red, black, and green.
Why does my anger scare you? Are you afraid of me
or are you afraid of what will happen
if I stand beside you?
I want to purge this, circle the parking lot, salt the asphalt,
grow whole universes in darkness.
But until then, I survive five miles under ice,
with other extinct things.
There I indulge in morbidity,
watch in silence as my flesh loses blood,
stiffens, loosens from my body. The gap between
cheek and cheekbone fills with slush water, I come apart
under teeth like butter knives, but the fish assure me
I am not feeling a thing.
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