Right now I am sitting under something disgusting
choking on cigarettes and whatever still counts as love.
Waiting. And I am terribly lonely.
I am the biggest cliché of what counts as
lonely. Lonely and tired.
Sublimating. But I have broken too many backs
to complain.

This wind has made my insides cough and sputter,
like the rusted coils of some twisted machine made
to shred fingertips in one clean sweep, snap tailbones and
shatter retinas. Where the striations along
my forearms bleed like tired men and the ever-present sound of
WHO EVEN GIVES A F*** runs stale because
we are nothing but dutiful ghosts throbbing in the shadows
of real people.

When I was small my mother sat me down
on the kitchen table and spoke quietly, "Son, people like us
don't make it out there. Look at your hands, the color of
coal. Your eyes, like shots fired from your daddy's pistol. What
do you see? What is hanging on the end of a silver string, waiting
for you to clasp it between your small hands?" She stroked my
hair that was not quite hair yet and smiled a drop of sadness.
At first when she spoke I could do nothing but nod. Her love
for me was convoluted. My love for her was boundless.

When I was fifteen I left her. Took the keys and kicked
a foot through the screen door in the middle of the night
because I was too ashamed and too much of a coward
to leave while she was watching. Closed my eyes and made myself
forget who I was, where I came from. I forgot how she laughed. I forgot
the scent of orange soap on her neck. Forgot the yellowing mattress and
the quivering light.

Tonight I dream I am swimming in a nebulous pool
of ghosts. They run slippery fingers through my insides
as if to claim me for one of their own. I close my eyes and a tongue
passes over my left ear and sings of a God chanting my name,
holding my soul on the frayed end of a silver string. Dangling by
my eyelashes.
I look up and she's laughing. She smells of citrus and
watered down coffee and painted light. Her lips are moving but
I can't hear the words. I am screaming.
Strain and strain for something tangible. Then,
with the flick of a finger, I am lost again.
My love for her was convoluted.
Her love for me was boundless.