My sadness is a tail that shakes
out behind me. What have I ever been
but certain?
Watch me bring these walls down. Thrashing
even as I walk from room to room.
I check all the windows,
and out on the porch.
I check the driveway.
I check my phone.
And when I find you, at last,
it is worse than not knowing.
Startling.
I want that word to be a bird. Startling
To take flight from my chest and sail up
up
up.
Later, you’ll hunch in some
adjacent room.
A drink in one hand, a phone in the other.
All hail America! How grand we are.
Our opiates as dull as ever.
I saw a porcupine hit in the road tonight.
The driver followed behind it with her brights on. She didn’t even
step out of the car as it stumbled into a field.
The news channels fill with riot. Riot and riot and riot.
How much does it matter that I grew
this tail?
That I cried as I tried to tear myself free of it.
To make startling a bird, shearing
away from this house.
I am all out of love songs.
Isn’t that timely?
One of the dogs walked up the bones of my left leg in the night and I thought,
whatever holds me together
has built a dragon rather than a bird.
This armored tail.
This armored tale.
Every soldier to her quarters.
Drawn and quartered.
Small, and frightened.
Here at the end of the story.
