Everyday I broom balls of carpet
into a pile behind the tower-
speaker jiggling my earlobes.
The man who’s life I’m taking over
says this room has the most beautiful corner
he’s ever seen. In the future
this will eat me.
This cleaning. Until there is nothing
but disturbances to what is
mine. Like this old muttering man
who comes around while we’re all high,
claims to be a ninja through masked
gum covered nubs, pushes
over spent candles. Drags a needle
across our favorite vinyl.
We are afraid of him.
And so when the girl I’d just met said James
it was close enough.
I followed her over the alley
to her Beetle, which was older than both of us,
and we drove through the night, chewing our eyelids
open, to her parents’ cabin three states away.
Where the thoughts were born
that led me to this depraved state.
Up for days, unable to trust
the meal in front of me, my ears turn
this whole scene into a beat,
beg my eyes to lay a symphony
across the top of it, promising
a better understanding-
I give in. I allow myself
to project such a stillness
out from my person that it
shakes the air, affects
my every thought. Each invisible shudder
long, sticking to the next like DNA, strands
wrapping tendon tight, forming
me just below it all, dancing wildly with her parents’
refusal to make eye contact, clearly
jealous of my displays of funk movement.
And no one at the bar has a place
for me to sleep, and there are
no more good vibrations,
and I come apart.
