gold morning

The structuring of days has shifted, some never

managing to start while others over-exist,

stretching with the same hollow trembling muscle sounds.

A boyfriend calls your phone, and starts explaining things;

embarrassed, you wonder, "Is this my boyfriend?

Did I forget about him?" You feel you must be the worst girlfriend,

to have forgotten, to have so thoroughly ignored.

His real girlfriend grabs the phone from you.

"Am I her, actually? Did we mix things up?" How awful

you are at being a person. There is a sensation that I

am slowly going deaf, but as my hearing goes my eyes

get stronger, or not eyes but seeing, bigger and brighter.

She is on the aluminum grating of a cold cement kennel floor,

hunks of flesh cut from her thighs and hips,

Oh well, I think, I suspected everyone felt them too large

but was being polite to spare me. She is now

lighter than your convictions, more pleasingly

malleable. Men pass in groups of two or more and

you feel when they are going to tell you something

about your body just before they tell you; they tell you,

she tries to counter-act by turning invisible but

their pewter monkey eyes see still, stinging.

I have decided to neutralize herself I mean, myself.

"I'm in love with a deer," she says, turning into

a deer. "He is tearing me apart."

The leaf-lost negative space presses too firmly,

you push back and are ricocheted and it hurts.