28 December 2017

I want to write an honest sentence. A heart unfolds red petals beneath little green bananas. Lacking paper, they wrote their names on banana leaves. Where now cactus is canvas for graffiti. Two letters in a row, but I can't get them right except by adding and then pruning back. My daughter spells Lord with an “a,” as if he boarded with us, mystery man in the extra room. I want to say “insurance,” but that's not it. Insulation is, to keep in the warm and out the cold. The law of syllables doesn't apply, though that of initial sounds seems to. The tip of the tongue resides inside the skull, where someone cracked a door. Inured to our losses, we dropped the plan, leaving higher premiums to the sick and elderly. A bearded homeless man at the bus stop on Kamehameha tilts his head down against the rain. In the suburbs, there you slink past the house of the man who molests you. So many years later, you tell the story. It fell upon your screen, but screen disappeared like a blind assassin. You'd kill your past, if you could. Instead, you gather letters like leaves and lay them on the floor. They can't grow, but you summons the wind. I'm so glad you never played the victim.

--28 December 2017