By Miles Dennis
I crushed my fingers stacking wood.
Cut my fingers on parking-lot glass.
Broken arms, been snapped by ropes, and burned by countless careless touches of the stove.
I cursed and cried each as I waited for them to fade.
It is different now, I can’t find it now. It is everywhere, except when I look for it, when it is nowhere.
The half-dead trees outside are wrong, they won’t bear leaves this spring. The half-melted streets are wrong too, they will never melt out, and I think it’s inside somewhere. I can’t find it.
The East is wrong too, the sun won’t come up in the morning. Its shade of yellow is cold and it drowns in the clouds.
The walls are wrong, they hold nothing, and the flickering kitchen lights are wrong too. I won’t turn them on in the morning. It’s in here somewhere, it must be.
Curled on the hard rug holding my lungs, my liver, looking under my fingernails, in my ears, and I still can’t find it.
The spider on my ceiling is laughing at me.
