It was in the code. The kicking and squirming. The hellish rictus of a book cover that harkened back to a smaller day, a smaller set of schedules, a smaller marketplace of human parts to buy back our destiny from. It’s not the snake’s fault, said the scorpion, it’s in his nature. More toes than a millipede. It was like language and fire had a baby. It was like a procreation cannon shot out comets into space in a last-ditch effort to populate the galaxy.

There are dragon traps on my ankles. I have a heart full of eternal springs of goodwill and my eyes shine like flashlights screwed into the back of my empty head. The skills needed to be happy are not complicated but paper mache will not bring back your dead husband. Your own internal tennis match with unroll you like a carpet and turn you red with shame as people more famous that you, people you should be, walk all over you.

Send me your regrets. Make them into arrows and shoot them into my chest. Make me into a porcupine until my drainpipe finally breaks. Let’s stop burning. Let’s keep a stoplight under the bed. Cull our lucifers until all that’s left is a stain on the walnut bookcase where that blood-soaked dictionary used to be. Let’s be seeing-eye dogs and help blind love cross the street.





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