A half decade’s pride,
familial forgiveness,
and guilt. Always guilt. 

in the dark of day
someone bleats an answer
we bark in disappointment
the globe turns anyway

i first saw you
in the cold protvino lab
with your cathode-ray tubes tied up way out of your face

watching from afar
i observed the atoms you smashed
and the resultant particles
ephemeral and transitional
all recorded on my clipboard
hungry to see you running again

when they first let me near you
all my training dropped like necrotic skin
dead dead weight
sheaf of research papers
scattering on sterile sheet-concrete

my head was barely in for a second
when i saw your real face
a blue flash
brighter than a thousand suns
tearing through my occipital lobe

immediately spilling onto the floor
was my evidence that the dosage was fatal
the nausea is purportedly immediate
proton currents are supposedly sour

strangely enough, you didn’t hurt at all

There’s a flight I booked to New York
that I cannot bring myself to cancel
It’s really embarrassing to admit 
but I’ll let you in on a secret:
I’ve never been on a plane before
Something about that particular inexperience
especially makes me feel like a child
stunted, arrested in development
I’ll tell you this, too, while we’re on the subject
I have an intense fear of powerlessness
so I guess I cannot stand the thought
of entrusting my fate in something manmade
My plans have since changed but
for the time being, there is still a seat
for me on a plane headed to New York
and while I still hold that ticket
I can tell myself I control that one thing

I wish it hadn’t happened to me
because it wasn’t supposed to happen to me
I didn’t need to be there
involved

But when she called for help
I took the steps two at a time

I wish it hadn’t happened to us
because it wasn’t supposed to happen to us

I wish she would leave him
but not how he tried to leave her
twice

But it happened
and I can’t forget it

The stairs and the carpet
stains on the hallway wall
busted and torn ligaments in a hand I’ll never hold again

I wish it weren’t real
I wish I could forget about it
but most of all
I wish she would talk to me again

Every time I go to any shooting range, attempting
to learn the skills to protect myself, a new instructor 
puts a bullet in my flesh with a different excuse.
At best they are not skilled with this type of gun,
this shooting range is underfunded, set up poorly,
muzzle flagged by accident, wrong place, wrong time.
At worst they say I’m easy to mistake, uncanny face,
for a ballistic dummy. The wound channels appear
nearly real, a perfect study, ripe for clinical notes.
Those instructors are the ones to tell me to stand stoic,
let them probe my injuries, might as well, the damage
is already done. And who will listen to a polyurethane 
mold of a human when it pleads you’re making it worse.

Forgive me
I do not
remember
it fully

right now–
you never
used it
first workshop

–but apparently
it’s vital
not even a little archaic
not even slightly cold

Each pen stroke

forms a pigmented figure

obscure characters

both in letter and image. 

Scratched, scrawled,

sprawling and spidery

sinisterly sibilant. 

My madness is laid bare

an executioner’s arcing axe-strike

severing mind and memory

from flesh and bone vessel. 

These words-a manifesto-

scribbled on newspaper edges,

bar napkins, and envelope backs

incoherent and indecipherable 

were they worth it? 

in this moment
what hurts the most
is that you planned it 
prepared yourself
to look me in the eye
calmly
patiently
fixedly
and break my heart
in a way it can never be unbroken
in a way that makes me question
Everything
i thought you were

I work for a figure
Unknowing of my existence
Hours of my week
dictated by a concept
that someone had to make
brick and mortar

I live for beautiful words
The kind that flow 
like a river from my soul
The kind that inspire 
the timid young writer

I feel so constrained 
by that which I must do
and I cannot help but wonder
what more there may be
because for me this thing
seems never-ending,
ever-tightening