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Not wanting to be victor or victim or valiant. Tired of the rigmarole of avalanched eyes. Now the blankets hunker down against my fidgeting frame and deep winter sets in. If only there could be a listener, a speaker and a set of hand signals to clap like code. Advantages earned, stars burning like the back of my eyes. Volleyed through hallways, ignored like ants. Visages of great great grandmothers molded into wallpaper. Porcelain dolls found in the ashes of a demolished house. Another inheritance for a greedy heart. New skin, new clothes, new ways of making words with the same old tongue, mouth. All these monsters banished from closets. Mummified fears we stuffed under our beds, ran fast after turning off the light. Smashed piggy banks. Old curtains and skeleton keys. Glassy dreams like smeared paint. Underwater voices. If only there could be a tunnel back to the cave of cartographers. I need to tell them to change the map, adjust the borders, erase the rivers that jumped their banks and re-name all the mountain ranges before it’s too late. Not wanting to be haunted by ticking clocks, I bury my awareness in a body bag, tag the toes of the mistletoe kissers. I learned these lessons the hard way.
