Constant awakenings when I read

the papers — bottles crossing the room

​

& slicing fingertips, unconscious bodies

knotted beneath sheets, frogs tossed

​

into pots to bob in boiling water. How long

will I live like this & live like this & die

​

like this. I will never flinch in the shadow

of a raised hand, but raised voices

​

in the street will always crash through me

like a tree dressed in telephone wire.

​

I won’t tell anything but shaking hands

and held breath when men on television

​

swing their arms like antlers crashing

through a windshield. A sickness knows

​

a glass is a weapon, a doorframe is a haven,

letting the fist fall is a solution. I already know

​

the story if they chalk my silhouette

across the floorboards of my father’s house.

​

They’d say they never knew. They never saw

the signs. They never, ever, could’ve guessed it.