you prefer she, right?
i want to say that it is not really a preference,
it just is. my life is not made up of preferences
but if it was, i would simply prefer to not be here.
i would prefer a cliffside, a Van Gogh landscape,
a menagerie of colors so bright that my eyes could
not focus, but mostly, i prefer to not see. if forced to,
i’d prefer to see the world through my eyes and through my eyes
i am six feet of stardust and Tennessee sunshine.
we heard how in Van Gogh’s Starry Night, you could tell
the time through the stars but around here we mostly guess.
in the night humidity, we tell time by the cricket’s chirp
and distant city lights—Marlboro smoke rising in place of us.