Lionnfart

I want you to know what I was doing on November the 5th, but we don’t have time. It is January; it has been two years. It's quite an old thing to rehash, especially when the pen is so cold. This poem can’t go on long so we’re going to get to the point. I used to write about shamans, priests come to undress me, but things are more direct now. They don’t say how, they say why. . I watched a woman in the AA meeting cry her eyes out. Her tears put out her cigarette, and her back curled, bending forward over herself - wilted, a flower. And when it came my turn I was so scared to drop my old, hole-y petals I left my chair, left the community center, left the Jeep, even, and walked down to the harbor to watch the moon rise. He’s always been so nice; he’s always been so gentle with my chubby-cheek insecurities and my six-toe peculiarities. He nodded along when I mouthed my secrets to the sand and when I couldn’t get out of the house, to the mouse behind my dresser. I’ve written novels

Sleeping gave me a chance, a good reason to breathe despite the difficulty of breathing. Despite lackluster love in my lungs, the moss gathering at the bottom. I am having a difficult time. I have lost my rhymes, lost the keys and the truths meant to be carried so far, so very far, to my grandchildren, to the whale outside my win- dow. He weeps peaceful- ly. He sighs constant- ly, bubbles floating from his blowhole. He has a big jaw, a big maw, a big shoe to fill. He gave the other one to me. I keep it low, deep in the chest at the foot of my bed. I keep it christened, by birth and by blood right, right there in the dead rosary. I see pagan symbols and gods in these dreams. I see stale meaning, old prophesy ghosting along the kitchen counter, the white flounder swimming past the TV. The aquarium that my house has become has swallowed me, much like the bath-blue whale. Much like the pang in my chest, the guilty, rusty knife I have has its hold on me, even in these