I’m trying to proselytize my loneliness
out into the world. I take the tools I do have—
the words—-the punctuation landing in my chest
like bouquets of bullet holes—the grammatical errors
splattering up against the wall—my primary sources,
my persuasive essays—and I carve an explanation
out of the table scraps. I tell them
the amount of things I haven’t done
nearly exceeds the amount of people I’ve been,
but they just don’t understand.
I don’t either, honestly. I want to be witnessed in
good faith but I am witnessed, instead, in small faiths—
little gasps of gratitude when the speeding cars
beaming up into the streetlights miss your vehicle
in their ascension—little gasps of gratitude
when you start choking and eventually cough up
the culprit, safe and sound—-when things are scraped away,
when they grind sparks against destruction just to give
a last-minute cinematic dodge away, sending the fist
into the ice—I am witnessed and I am witnessed,
chewed up to taste, regurgitated. The world
doesn’t like the flavor. My lover tells me
I taste like old infested meat
wrapped in artificial strawberry
to keep the redness in, to keep the illusion
of freshness from spilling out. My father tells me
I don’t taste like anything at all. Everyone
in this situation is dead, and let’s not kid ourselves,
I’m not being witnessed at all, I’m being glamoured
into invisibility, my frame turning transparent
as I reach into the bookstore shelves. They still don’t understand.
How can I make it any clearer? This isn’t my best poem, I know that,
but I was always too scared of the leeches to dip into the lake,
even when mama said we can always salt them off, don’t be scared,
I know it’s cold, honey, but you have to jump in now
or it’ll dry up soon. Global warming—even when the girl begged me to join her
underneath
the water, forever preserved by emerald and seafoam,
even when I saw the unfamiliar tranquil presence
reflected outward in the daylight, the holy version of me
rubbing my face in this world’s cruelty.
I want to walk through the hospital curtain
separating me from the deranged sphere
we call the real world and enter the Real World—
the world where that holiness is tangible, not despised—
but I never really walked until I was three years old
which made me a factory reject and now I
can’t even walk at all, so these dreams
of a swift stride into a purer existence are a bit
unrealistic, don’t you think? But I just can’t kill the hope, I just can’t stop
loving.