lightswitch

i grew a hazmat suit from the surface of my skin
my grave and my carapace it is
part of my skeleton
phosphorescent polystyrene

it's funny the things
that you miss when someone goes missing

i miss the way he always knew
how to perfectly pronounce every chemical
and how he always knew what they were for
what they did to the body

an encyclopedic drug addict
i searched the woods for him
i walked on the side of the road
with a metal detector trying to find
the crowns from his teeth

i couldn't find anything
i know he's dead

"I know he's dead," I tell myself
"but if he showed up I wouldn't question it
and I wouldn't be surprised."

I lost myself too
but she's never very hard to find
caught her sitting on the guard rails
with heavy blood shot eyes
the flashlight made her wince in pain
so I clicked it off and told her to go home
she shook her head no
and cried

if I closed my eyes I could see what she really was
twenty feet tall with mossy black wings
the head of an owl with the nose of a bat
and the voice of a crow,
everywhere she dripped blood and
died a little and every moment,
I think it surely must be the last
surely no one comprised of such opposing parts
was made to last

but I did not close my eyes so all I saw
was that familiar hunched figure
small and tired, pale fingers
with a white knuckled grip on the guardrail

I told her to go home louder
and she shook her head no again

there's no home to go back to that wants her

I sighed resigned and went back
looking for others

I found another playing with tar
and feathers by the lake,
he had a smile like a child's
and wore rings around his neck

I told him to go home too
and he asked me to let him be
for just a little while longer
so that he could watch the sunrise

the sunrise is the first thing you miss
when you die so I let him go


when I got home
( on top of the Conowingo hydroelectric dam there is a small metal house suspended in the air, the ladder is rusted, the space inside is crowded, and it is lonely but the view is extraordinary )

the first thing I did was take off the suit
and as I did bones creaked and skin shifted
naked without my chitin
I deftly searched my body with my hands
looking for a switch or a button
that would shut off
the constant constriction of my ribs,
the sharp ache of my heart that
takes up the entirety of my chest

I searched for the switch
that put all organs to sleep

a bird with a bat nose watched me from
the solitary window with heavy eyes
and she rapped on the pane with her claws

"You already know that there isn't one." she cawed

I continued to look slowly, thoroughly
"yes
but if there was
i would not question it
and i would not be surprised."

her and I repeated this
twice a week

from sunset to sunrise