poetry notebook

What will you do

when the flat side

of a butcher knife

slaps you on the temple

just hard enough to make them think

you should have died

when all the while

your eyes were focused on the edge

coming toward your throat?

Will you suddenly feel revulsion

for everything you’ve ever been

and are

a foreigner

to your own body

some stranger in the mirror?

When you start to write

do you sometimes feel

blood rush to your head

or vomit? Break out

in cold sweat, shivering,

barely able to sit erect?

Does a clock tick and cats asleep

project you 37 years

into your future

when paralysis is still

a foreign element unconsumed

by your sense of what is you

and what is not you,

the sagittal

divide of smile and frown?

In that moment, your youth

do you wonder if possible

to get that far

with parched eye

and perpetual presence

of this other?

Did you sometimes

even believe

it wouldn’t be worth it?