janky freshwater bitch fish

you looked at me my rice paper nails steamy window skin and thought I could tear through and you were right and right again my body now nicked tells your story is purple the saddest color must the foxes scream like that why does every lost stuffed lamb blend so well into the sidewalk

alone save the wine and the freshly fertilized house plants and the fear

not religious but I do the sign of the cross when I drop my phone

my smoke alarm goes off when my downstairs neighbor burns their dinner

and other ways to say we’re all in this together you are my problem as I am yours

my skull holds things I wasn’t alive to learn 40 million years of trial and error and error

we are not worlds ourselves nor stars we are the dust that lands on dust and still we are marvelous bringing weight to time by concerning ourselves with it and with its many tenants

this drive was hard on my neck my knuckles my nerves and my knees but it was all worth it to see a sea of still here’s screaming at Arkansas you’ll never take me

some days the car doesn’t crash the storm reroutes to Missouri the towers talk to you the whole way some days you make it home safe

you’re hysterical at your own jokes chomping at your bit a contagion of which I’m wholly immune steel and sterile to a catching laughter

maybe it is light that comes off of you and maybe there’s a woman out there to bask bathe, burn in it but here I fidget check clocks, reach for a phone’s phantom hum I’m pure white cold to the touch absorbing almost nothing of you