what do you wish 
people knew about you?
they should know I am not 
one of the good ones.

there aren’t any good ones. 
there are the ones 
that will apologize
and the ones that won’t.
the ones that know 
what they’re capable of
and the ones that don’t. 
we are all capable of everything.

where I grew up there were 
only two doors. all the mirrors 
were portraits of white men
in powdered wigs, scowling.
when I tumbled, the needles 
of the longleaf pine rustled,
winded and worried, hustling
a nest to gentle my fall. 

there aren’t any bad guys.
there are the ones who will
accept their culpability 
and the ones that won’t. 
the ones who hear
the voice of the turtle
and the ones that don’t. 
we are, each one of us, implicated.

if I can’t unspill the blood
at least let me be useful.
if I can’t be good
at least let me be brave.

Everything needs context for comprehension.
The lake drinks the moon, this duck is a rabbit.
A face needs a mirror, or a hand to caress it.

Our hands shape the world.
Our eyes make the sun set.
Everything needs context for comprehension.

A face needs a mirror. An entrance,
an exit. A wound needs a weapon
or a hand to caress it.

Everything needs context, or 
maybe a lead vest. Don’t mistake knowledge
for comprehension.

Lost is the letter alone alphabetic,
and a word has no essence outside of its sentence.
A face needs a mirror, or a hand to caress it.

The body is bounded, it filters perception.
Duck-rabbit meets buckshot. The lake’s full of bird shit.
Everything needs context for comprehension.
A face needs a mirror, or a hand to caress it.

(for MA)

Imagine a bowl specifically for tomatoes.
It’s ceramic, cream-colored. Little
plums and cherries painted on its side.
It is the proper size to hold five months
of summer. You knew it would be there
as soon as you walked in the door.

Imagine someone who wants to fill you up 
with stoplight heirlooms. She likes to wrap
a blanket around her waist like a skirt. 
She doesn’t like to wear skirts. 
She swaggered up into my face and 
smashed a bottle over my skull and 
what ran down my nose and 
dripped onto the floor was
the purple of nightshades.

There’s a name for what we’re doing 
and it’s so holy it will get you kicked out of church. 

I like to choose. I like to decide.
Deciding is a gesture towards certainty
and I like certainty. 
You can surprise me, though.
You surprise me every day, loving 
food and eating little, loving
me with the grace of a dandelion spore 
dancing the wind. Folding
yourself into shapes
unknown to geometry. How
fast your hair dries, how 
quick the silver stirs in the sun.
Your heart and how 
much it wants and how 
cautious it is and how
it asks, can I have that
(yes), 
is that forever 
(no, but yes), 
does it matter that much
(yes, Yes, YES, 
it’s everything). 

It’s a Japanese thing, sashiko, 
meaning “little stabs,”
the practical 
taking the threadbare  
and stitching together
something unassailable 
and humbly beautiful. Making
a well-loved pair of jeans last
longer than bottomless coffee
on a screened-in porch
with a nervous dog and 
all those new birds and 
my hand on your ankle and
all our stories 
quilted into a story.

Imagine wanting anything more than this.

I don’t want total peace. 
Which is good because there’s a mouse 
driving a truckload of Class I explosives 
through the tunnel that connects my heart 
to the place fireflies hang out in the daytime.

The thing about being afraid someone 
will hurt you is that 
they will. 
Where is fear useful? In the tall grass. 
Can it feed us? Then keep it. 
Throw it in the tool shed.

Miracles do happen, however. 
There are seventy degree mornings 
in August. Beer is frequently available 
and sometimes refrigerated. 
The mouse is wearing 
a bolo tie. One day someone woke up
and invented the egg roll.

I could be doing anything right now 
and I’m choosing this: 
tearing off hunks of my body, 
slathering them in butter.
I am leavened. This is no 
subsistence food. We have time, 
we have yeast. We are not 
wandering in the desert.

We are home.

This might be the last thing I write. 
Keep saying yes and you will find yourself 
a pile of flash photography and memories 
of dead pets. The quality of your life 
depends entirely on your willingness 
to say yes. The scars that tighten your skin 
can become a map back to Mississippi.

Inside is a relatively recent addition 
to the experience of living. Our homes 
used to be holes. A heart without holes
is a peach pit, the meat sticks to it but 
it can’t keep time. Not every breach 
needs a suture. You’re disturbing a lotta 
stuff that god put together for a reason.

There’s still beauty in doom, though. 
Keep getting older and you will find yourself
made entirely of oatmeal, lotion, and 
prescription medication. The vestibular 
apparatus. Fuck around and find the tiny 
hairs in your ear pointed in the wrong 
direction. See what happens. 

That feeling of getting what you asked for. 
Yes, the moon has a hole in the middle. 
And the dough holds pockets of yeasty air.
And the glaze crackles under your fingers.
And the wild musk of vanilla. And the
sugar melts away on your tongue.
This might be the last thing you read. 

The evil version of me is auditioning for The Bachelor.
The evil version of me is running for city council 
on a platform that features charter schools 
and anti-homeless architecture.
The evil version of me is Airbnb’ing his three-bedroom 
and setting up a pup tent in the garage.
The evil version of me just bought another labradoodle.

The evil version of you is a life coach, a Christian yogi,
a wellness influencer and a personal brand strategist.
The evil version of you refuses to eat seed oils.
The evil version of you wants to have six children 
for all the wrong reasons. 
The evil version of you thinks bisexuals aren’t real.

The evil version of me is at Whole Foods, 
snitching on attempted shoplifters.
The evil version of you is at the same Whole Foods
intentionally misgendering a cashier.
The evil version of me just met the evil version of you.

Our evil twins are going to Buffalo Wild Wings for their first date. 
Our evil twins send each other podcasts on financial independence.
Our evil twins are logging into their joint Facebook account.
Our evil twins are using ChatGPT to write their wedding vows.

Our evil twins have never waited a table or restocked a shelf.
Our evil twins have never overdrafted their bank account.
Our evil twins have never had sex while sober.
Our evil twins have never cried when they weren’t sad or angry.

Our evil twins live in a gated community.
Our evil twins enabled push notifications for their Ring doorbell.
Our evil twins own multiple firearms.
Our evil twins don’t know the names of their neighbors.
To the monsters, we’re the monsters.
Our evil twins are terrified of us.

I wait in the former food court to see my dermatologist. 
A cell phone dead zone so everyone stares into the
greasy mirror of locked screens. The spectral imprint
of free sample bourbon chicken, an olfactory haunting.
A nurse walks out of the old Hot Topic and calls us back
in pairs, puts us two to an exam room. She confirms
our birth date and coughs directly into our open mouths. 

Days pass. The doctor asks us to agree on a single
set of symptoms to avoid confusing the AI transcriptionist.
I hold my fellow patient’s hand as the doctor sprays his 
warty knee with liquid nitrogen. There is nothing
for us to do with pain. It’s not “for” anything. My fellow patient
writes me a prescription for a free Subway footlong
with the purchase of any Apple device. A text message
from my insurance company denies the claim I haven’t filed yet. 

My 6-8 week follow-up is scheduled for Junetober 51st. 
Following the arterial exit pathway past the nursing unit that
was once a Sears, the morgue that was an escape room, the 
Starbucks that has always been a Starbucks. One can be
sick and well simultaneously. This is, in fact, the natural
state of things. Outside the pediatric unit that was once 
a Build-a-Bear a chain gang of child convicts waits 
to have their polio vaccines reversed. 

In the empty cavern of the parking garage I press the unlock 
button on my key fob and a chorus rises, the immortal screech
of every bat in the elevator shafts, every bird nested in the 
skylights, the roaches and mice in the subfloor feasting on the 
leavings of private equity strip mining, the black mold
in the ventilation ducts and the severed roots of the pecan grove
beneath the foundation,
all of them singing
in a single voice asking me to 
please rate the quality
of the service received, 
on a scale of 1-5.