“They’re not deviled eggs
because Lucifer was once an angel.”
-Anth
At the bar you order
a small white plate
of celestial eggs.
Holy mayonnaise
yellow topped
with chives.
They are gulped
except for the last,
which you offer me
through telepathy.
I am the egg.
When I stop throbbing
is when I live
so I hold it high
in our five spotlights.
The arena cheers.
I see many doors.
Five floors:
on the bottom, death,
but each row above
a plethora of possibilities.
In your car, you say
I am feeling unmoored,
my shoe half-out your door.
The renaissance is what we
make. It is brown paint
over everything, the oil
light– you ask, what is on
your mind? I don’t know
how much you know
but I felt the warmth
of the machine beside me
thrumming on the street.
You were on the phone,
I think. I glared– I think
the end is coming
faster than fresh ideas
or the universe’s
rate of expansion.
The fact you drove
saved me from running
through the dark city
in the center of my existence.
In the shadow room
inside my house,
I did not process
emotion. The throbbing
sprain in my foot.
It was that death
issued a rain check
when I smacked my head
in the basement bar
of the indie theater.
I was the movie
everyone watched.
I left everyone waiting
for me to emerge
from the sewer. I swear
I will not group up next time.
I want each synapse
comprehended. To succeed
would be the stretchy fabric
of my living. Nylon
for the brain. Procrastination
for the ascent. I say you need
not worry because I am not
worried. Depression is a shovel
deep in soil and I am buried
in my mind, thankful
to be given a second
heaping of kindness
when I never deserved the first.
Hard to learn you
when my body is uniformly
jagged and growing
hairs sharp like knives
eternally out of every inch.
I want to be soft
with you, but once
we eat, all mysticism
is lost to process.
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)