 I broke every mirror in my apartment, retroactive payment for seven years of bad luck. Then I painted 37 self-portraits so I could get a good look at myself. In the background, the wisps of paint revealed the intersection between I'm happy and this is unsustainable. I stood there in the eye of my own storm. I tried to pick a direction through the winds and the cows flying, and a witch took my favorite sneakers. I followed the path of most resistance because it was familiar and the toll was another mirror broken. I stuck with directions, got lost three times, found myself too far north that was thinking about going south, but I got caught with the fog in between the mountains and now I'm stuck here. Feathering out roots among fertile soil, growing and grown, dropping poems like leaves in the fall, it's one of those moments that changes your life forever. And either way, I am lost and either way, I lose. This is actually another new poem. I'm going to stock up the new ones. It's an interesting one. When I was growing up, I called my grandparents Mimi and Bumpa and recently I had a dream about my Mimi, so I wrote a poem about her. It's called Mimi. This afternoon, I was invited to Peter Pan's wedding at my grandmother's house. She's so much smaller now. She looks like a child, but warm as ever, polka-dotted sweetness. She looks odd in a blazer. Usually she just wears sneakers. I feel bad. I showed up late, sat on the ferry. Her mind takes steps backwards. We all hold on to the past, but she's immersed in it. Her body is going in one direction, wrinkling and reaching for the ground. Her mind has gone the other, pulling on to the past so hard it has warped her future. After Bumpa died, she spent so much time holding on to what had been her mind tripped on the bunched memories and she tripped over them and out of the now. Back, back, back she goes. Thank you. I had decided on an order to read these in and now I'm just completely blowing that. I'm all out of order already. Let's see. We'll go. This one's called a summer and a bill from the dentist. I've been holding on to the past so tight that it hurt my teeth. I'm breathing the carbonation in champagne and waiting to drown when it goes flat until there's only carbon monoxide memories between my vertebrae floating in spinal fluid edging their way towards nerves that are burning themselves numb. Ambulances squeak through the joint in my jawbone. Their wailing is hurting my ears. I tried to suck loneliness off of your lips and all I was left with was a mouthful of cavities. Tastes like someone used a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon of salt. The recipe was mis-made. It's too hot, too long, and this side is getting crispy. Lack of oxygen lulled me through the dense mist of past cloud-shaped memories, misty fantasies. Present is mortared all around me. Stumbles echo across the dirt. Dust clogs my inhale. I'm staring at the fucking mail. Why won't the mailman forget my address? Streetlights are strewn through my hairlight glitter. Tastes like asphalt and moonlight. Fertlined winds wipe my cheeks. The black cat night curls up next to me and falls asleep into what could have been. Ship horns purr into my chest. The bridges claw at my ribcage, kneading the way that they do. Pause, dipped in mustard blossoms. My heart beats to the rhythm of a robotic vacuum cleaner now. I can feel its beep in my cracked molars and cat scratch broke my fever dream. Let's see. I have one more. One more good? Okay. This is like a prose poem. We'll call it. It's called Torch. Are you whistling? Thanks, bud. Torch. You know when someone spits fire, how they take a mouthful of something noxious and spew it into the air around them and light the flammable liquid so that they become a human torch for as long as they can spew the fuel. What happens if instead of letting it burn off outside of you, you swallow? Internalize all of what was supposed to burn off. Let it burn inside of you so no one can see your trick, but you know that you're a magician. You know you're a human torch. You just don't burn where anyone can see you. Will your flames extinguish themselves? No oxygen so they smolder into embers and burn you up slowly from the inside out. What happens if you swallow and then change your mind? Swallowed your talent and now no one can see it, but you can't figure out how to let it out again. There's no opening. You open your mouth and can't catch a flame. It's only smoke, so you start asking for help and everyone thinks you're not really talented. You're just flowing smoke up their asses. What do you do? You could cut yourself open, but then you're a dead torch and the blood would probably extinguish all of the fire you had anyway. How do you let it out? How do you mine for the talent you swallowed? How do you let out what you've tried to hold in? How do you make your light known? It's a question I've been trying to answer. Splatter it on the walls with paint. Find sharp shards of words and let them pop through my skin until a glow from inside leaves a shadow I can trace on paper and pass off as proof I am wondering if it went out. Extinguished by stomach acid and neglect. Every time I pop a new hole I'm waiting to see the reflection of the fire burn in someone else's eyes as proof that it exists. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it does and that's why it feels like I'm burning from the inside out sometimes until I throw ink or paint and leave some shadow figure cast by the light inside the evidence that I existed at all. Thank you.