I’ve never been alone in this world. Everything I do
with God in my pocketbook and sweet saliva
in the sink basin. There’s blood behind my bottom teeth.
They grow in an X, telling me that even I don’t want
to swallow. I’m not going down without a fight.
Mary Emma is pregnant again and no one knows
what to do. We pass each other in the carpet-lined halls,
her eyes like the inside of a perfume ad. Wet and glossy,
but I know that pain. I’ve lived it. All roads point
to more of the same unholy folding and if I’m lucky,
the strip malls concentrate less in open air. Paved roads
turn to dirt and I’m still me in the driver’s seat. I’ve got
a lead foot, a voice in my head that says saying no
is an act of God. I’m paying for the original sin
with two-dollar bills and the state coin book I stole
from my mother. Half the states are missing, but there’s only
two that matter. Here and anywhere else. I want out
of this house so badly I could light my mattress up and take
to the streets. A doomsday caller, ghost in my throat, holes
in the bottom of my socks. Oh honey, if you don’t eat now,
you’ll forget the taste of everything other than spit.
You don’t know me, or maybe you do. Blood-orange child
of the devil, speak me into existence. He gave me the ghost
and I’ll use it, space my body out into sizable chunks
and let the living air do the rest. I want to be part of America,
a gaping hole in the center of those missing states. I am
never alone here, in the hospital parking lot, smoking
something out of the brown end of a two-liter. Everyone’s being
ugly in the back seat, my palm on the cool sliver
of the window. Some places are meant to be abandoned
so that we can feel the presence of what is lost.
I like the music my stomach makes, stumbling shallow
growls. The ghost leans in ear first while I hold its chin
up to my belly. There is something inside me, so desperate.
Honey, it says, I am open just for you.