200
Your face like a house of cards dealing disaster. Someone holds a pair, a fullhouse, all aces. Someone plays solitaire. Blackjack was always my game, doubling down came naturally. Now we wear these papercuts like badges and bloodlines. Our bones banging around like dice in a cup. Why would anyone play roulette, you asked? Why not, I thought. I really only wanted to ride a rollercoaster from the top of a skyscraper to the back of your neck. To raise my arms into ether and open my mouth like a drowning decibel and exhale exhilaration. But maybe I was wearing concrete boots, or had grown near-sighted. Not like my grandpa who could see an eagle or elk from a long ways off. He was never wrong. Not like me, I have bracelets of big mistakes. Some call them shackles. A dynasty of delivering bad news, flowers to hospital rooms. Hearts attacked with a need to stop beating. Your face like an addiction, an injection. Skipping the hyperbole, moving straight on to the betrayals. The hands cupping moonlight on continents still shifting under foot. This was the jungle we were born in. The coiled snakes and humid humming of becoming animal.
