We are sitting in the hottest room on earth around a bowl of nuts and Civilian nr. 3 sits
unabashed and asks me if it’s about someone specific. I do the stink eye from looney tunes, the
half opened mouth, because obviously it’s about someone specific but she has just broken the
cardinal rule, asking that, asking for more information, because everything I want you to know is on the page, chica, people do not want to talk about their writing, about the recurring motifs and jumbled verse, if they wanted to talk about it they wouldn’t write, they would just talk, because the written word only came about because of the things we could not communicate with our wet mouths alone,
          Ah well. Thinking about it more during the fresh days of the new year, during the days
that I absolutely was not supposed to - coloring the soft snow a rotten grey. Not overshadowing
the determined joy that sits on my brow bone. Thinking about how my mouth seems wired shut
these days. Thinking about the shoulder gashed open in the ER. Thinking about how competent
I would be at calling an ambulance. About soggy leather and funkadelic pop, about my own wet eyes and yours ever confused, ever matte and shallow as the wading end of the pool, never
breaking from mine, never quite matching the desperation. A perfect arm’s length away. A
perfect, yes. And when I saw it, that you spent one of the last minutes of 2024 looking my way,
when my dog brain went woof at my glowing rectangle, it felt like falling down the stairs in the
old house, the trick step at the top taking you all the way back down, the soft curve into the wall
making you bite the floorboards, perfect, yes. Even just your name written down makes me ill
sometimes. I’m not quite sure of the science of it.
          In Iowa it’s pointless to look out the car window at night because the road in front of you
just dissolves into black, swallowed by some inky foreboding throat. Hot cheek on the cool
glass, the window that won’t quite roll down all the way, and I can’t look left or I’ll cry. On
Christmas Eve grandmother drove over the hill into the ditch and I cracked my neck too hard
looking the other way, looking for Gabriel, waiting for my mom to sprout wings, but all she did
was hit the beige roof and laugh. I come home twice a year and nothing changes except her
and me.
          There’s no sense in trying to poison yourself. Last night, thick carpet of laundry on the
floor, twenty small bottles and lined pages, towels and cork boards and indoor wind chimes.
Wandering around in the snow with my socks on looking for the moon. My shadow stark on the
garage door. The butcher clips the leash right back on the collar. I let you lead me right to that
dead end.