walking around my home wearing sun
glasses FitBit records silent steps on white

wood floors creak a silver SUV whirs past
window no peephole a dead end slightly

darker shade how my eyes reckon
in multiple lights their very veins

stretch and pulsate spectrum my entire
field ever present ever pressured

the world in layers I perceive body
as hunger pushing into all frames

of frames of knick-knacks I need to
donate but fear the gift-givers will find out

one may ask that yodeling pickle wasn’t
good enough of course not what was ever

its purpose but to transfer to another hand
or be buried deep in dry and dying land

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)