hill

You feel you deserve love but never

Your own and mostly

When you don’t

The floor and ceiling are sticky with dust

And guilty fantasies and fantasies

About being guilty

And a baseball glove

On your dresser passively

Catches sunlight

I remember you by the objects that sat for months

Watching you try to fall asleep

Water bottle and lunch box and toilet paper

And me itchy in your sheets

Another inanimate cheerleader

I remember you

By the dust that you disturbed

Moving through ordained clutter

Immovable as the wisdom buried in your belly

matryoshka

I am the whole set of dolls

All at once

for you

I’ve been

Carefully plucking flowers from

My belly

Each year

Let’s pay them no mind

They are all locked inside

The graying sunlight

And the grass

And me

And they are all right here

In your arms already-

All of the characters I have harvested from my heart

That ever loved anyone else.

Gut

I dream of welcoming you back like a pet on college breaks

When I can find my way through the mansion

to the comfiest room in my head.

For now my station wagon

Tumbles down county roads

In red skied towns with doors

To interstellar grottos

To the devil's womb-

I am just so far

From these matters right now.

Do you consider this an affliction?

My streetscape mind with pastel blocks and steps

Down to bookstore portals that lead me back to a cold

Sea trench

Swimming to distant moons

Wading through unfamiliar stars hoping

To feel a familiar Sun.

Roller coaster roads wind over forgotten billboard towns

Over Satanic elevator malls

Over steel beamed movie theaters on demolished blocks.

These nightmares hug me in the day-

I stare into the night and feel as mortal as a sheep

I stare into a bowl of cereal

And tremble like a god in human skin

Gripping my spoon

Forgetting how to swallow

I am just so far

From these matters right now.

Doubt is rooted firmly in me

Like a tree in soil

From the vacuum I was pulled into birth

To the vacuum I shall return

There is a pinhole in the wall of my brain

Slowly

evicting me

From within -

I am just so far

From these matters right now.