Look
I think you know
I may remove my products from your shelves
Because I don’t care about getting a profit
And the cash I’ve made
feels counterfeit
I’ll just be constructing a barrier
that’s the length of my arm
You walk past where my fingertips would land
It’s not your fault
Anyway, when I recuse myself from others
life reminds me
that I live a valuable currency
This has to end not because you’ve done anything wrong
But because I’ve already left
Found amid dry lowlands
along the Pacific seaboard
where no one ever doused the sand in sunflower seeds
during mornings bereft of peanuts,
when it rained water and
not snacks delivered by an Instacart driver,
this natural bird persisted
Despite an absence of lazy 11am cooing
couched in obscenities directed at the family,
the California scrub jay did not go extinct
it perched on
the Norwegian brown rat, however,
also known as the roof rat for its keen ability to climb
burrowed beneath the sidewalks
and emigrated to a nearby neighborhood
as soon as
pellets of store-packaged handouts disappeared
in an apocalyptic event
that the scrub jays could only describe as
…some other day
when that lady wasn’t there
I did not realize
until right now
that you
and I
have
known
each
other
this
well
for
this
long.
My friend,
It’s so nice to see you
I wanted to tell you that my heart broke last week because of some boy whose name I’ve forgotten
It was urgent that you know
Then, after I recounted the events to you
It was clear no one would need to remember
The man is now a story
He’ll be a note in the song we’re playing some afternoon
if anyone can recall him
He is, all of a sudden
of no value
That’s what friends do
Rearrange your perspective
Help you find where you stand
My friend,
It’s a better world you let me live in
It’s a better world
this
has a taste
like the color of an echo
rafting at a waterfall
illuminated,
the texture would be
like the scent of snow
inside a hologram.
if you could puff
a milkshake
of butterflies,
you’d know it
Just like lawn mowers machete over innocent grassland,
the trains in Mr. Mallory’s city grated along their metallic tracks,
tearing through all atoms of stillness to set a pace for the day
Standing on the platform
Mr. Mallory rested his arm across the length of his flappy leather satchel
and analyzed the concrete
We have a fat fish
Right now
he is wedged under a piece of pretend wood
at the bottom of his aquarium
His extremely tiny mouth is opening like
a heart valve, again and again and again
In a rhythm making life happen
I’m waiting for him to die
Because he’s not really fat
He’s actually sick
About a week ago our other fish,
the one who had a crooked back,
floated to the top of the water
and didn’t move his mouth anymore
Then this guy just puffed up
His body, his stomach, has stretched out
Like a ball of sad is stuck inside
Before this, he swam around
Now he stays in one place,
either at the top of the tank
or down in the fake flora
I just went to look at him
At this moment, he’s resting on the rocks
Tail and fins still as a skyline
Only the mouth moving, opening, opening, opening
He looks like a horror movie
When his friend died,
I looked into the tank and saw
that the eyes had gone white
Cloudy
The little gills weren’t pulsing
So I scooped him out with a ladle
and buried him under the maple tree outside
After I put the dirt on,
I was afraid he wasn’t ready,
so I dug him back up
To make sure he was fully finished
He didn’t move
He was covered in soil
I buried him again
Poured some water on the tree
Told him he was a really good fish
Oh my god
I just checked on our fat fish again
He’s caught in the plastic fern branches
The little mouth is panting still
His black eyes are enormous,
glossy and half silver and pleading
I drew a heart for him on the glass
Where he is facing
Now I will wait with him
Play music as the night goes on
Because I think tomorrow he will not hear it
I will bury him at the maple tree too
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