do it for sylvia

an abcedarian poem

after hours

back of mind, I imagine you: a

cartographer, you map out the pieces of me

down across the tropic.

easily, this becomes an exercise

foreign to the worst, rotted parts of me.

good questions—here:

how do I learn to love this?

If I jump, will anyone bear witness?

jump out, past imagination, too hurried for a

kill this time.

lanterns lit, we’ve all gone out searching for

moments to mirror our best ones.

nothing quite compares.

oven is on—I hold my head outside of it.

planets—to the naked eye, in reverse.

quietly, you try and explain

retrograde to me, I just

smile like this means something

truthfully, something more than the moment

ultimately, we have nothing but the moment

vivid for a split second before it washes into the next one.

writing home, only when you don’t miss me. I try to be something

xeric to the eye, I don’t ask for anything but

yellow gold if we make it, and there’s no chance in hell, no

zone left of me untouched by your negligence.