It's August now and I'm anchored to the ocean bed
(sad, sad violins tangled in seaweed
and there are half-smoked spliffs in the sand
and the sand is ashes, you are standing
knee-deep in it)
after swallowing the heaviest truth,
one of those little pearls-of-whatever
(wisdom?) kept in a glass jar in the dusty attic of mind
until they could perhaps later be threaded into
(wisdom) accessories,
that I didn't anticipate would choke me
only partially, until most of my breath had been lost
somewhere in the folds of a pillow from nights ago
(where all the screams go, even those
that never know sound and settle
in the blank spaces between my fingers,
going stale, going septic)
and definitely did not expect would surpass
the cyclical run-through,
rake-through,
right through the r word I can't say.
It's August now and it's been seven years.
Seven years good luck and bad.
It was silly superstition to expect a time to be set.
This is a timeless job, I know that now.
It's not a cycle, because it hasn't been the same.
It's August and it's like Groundhog Day
because I'm not forward, I'm back, and not a step
or two, but there are no steps.
(I've fallen. It was only a matter of time.
I tried to yell before but you never heard a sound.
Maybe I never made one. Maybe I won't
when I hit the ground.
Listen,
this time, now that one's done
and someone please help her,
the next one.)
