Tools That Betray

She turned to me and spoke with a swollen tongue about yesterdays I was too young to have witnessed. And how they had led to us.

With thoughts made of glass she stood. So transparent. So willing to shatter. For someone opaque.

I stared at the water and traced its path in my head. From ocean to river to inlet. In my parking space at the end of the world. Where words don't know how to say. And conversations leave us with even more unsaid.

What's left of suburbia a failing zephyr. As the sirens wail. As the ambulances collect their victims.

We move aside to allow them to pass. Because the screech tells us so. Because our habitat is all we are.

Quarry us the tools that betray. Cold lumberjacks gazing up toward heights belonging only to others.

It changes me so much, but I don't feel any different.

Colored pages keep what memory has not. Skin biting down hard to keep what sex won't hold. The bloody rags lay afterward as we change out the sheets. And everything is cleansed of. Everything except the outlines drawn in arms too eager.

Spare the needle. Increase the dosage. Until it can make sense.

Life is what happens when I forget to care how they feel.

In every argument I have with myself I always lose.

Just an empty box. That's all I found. As I waded down the stairs. Thinking I had recovered enough to drown again. Turning out the lights to test if they will come on again.

Isn't that what people do?

The channel number constantly fluctuates, but I'm always the same show.

Went downstairs to just an empty box. So alone. Nothing to tell me I'm not myself.

It was difficult to wait long enough for that chill enough to be edible.

All those years readying myself for the revolution. I'd always assumed it would happen to everyone else.

Not me.

They're wrong. Tongueless Judases.

Say a prayer.

Chase the real. Until it snags the skin in its zipper.

I don't know what to be.

Or why I would want to have those choices.