Supernova

These days I like to wear adult clothes and pretend to be a library, looking laser-thin down the bridge of my nose to belittled people scraping through the uneducated book lust wilderness. I scrabble their hearts into my lengthening middle names.

I used to split my mind into different tented versions of myself so that I could hunt in packs. I unwrapped Christmas for young girls and sprinkled the glowing owl dust on their tiny moth-wing mouths. My conscience was all elbow back then and I was looking for a candle lens to see myself through. To see myself up. To see myself out.

You speakered me. You made anvil with my river. You made craters of silence in my speeches. Over time, you left graffiti on my driveway prison of a face. Every corner I take too quick, every losing bet I make with glee, every avalanche I start by laughing too loud, it's all dedicated to the way you forgot things in memory of yourself. I can still describe the arc of you, the parabola of your life. I see now that you were a runaway response to jail cell tangents. The further away you get, the more of my mercy you are blind to.

So now I sweep up disco balls and add crossbones to skulls on the black flag of my high seas. I have the intuition of a tame zebra. You left me with scars all over my cloak of invisibility. I let my backstage pass lapse and now it's as useless as old milk. I can only throw curve balls to music teachers these days and my boomerangs don't return. I have the simple anatomy of a pencil. I am almost completely business card.

So thanks for the high kicks and the plectrum embedded in my liver. I am a different person now. Tree frog bright and jaunty. I am bright paint on an old house. I am cobweb free and solid in my stare. Sure, I might be half nametag these days but it's from beautiful failure and not from a lack of trying.

See you soon, supernova. Return to me in your own time. I'll be on vacation until then. There is no smile in the world that can get away from me now.



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