There are many ways to leave and not all of them involve disappearing into yourself. Some are easy as (_____). Say it: flight. (_____), etymology archery, the passage of days, tail of a dart, a selection of premier whiskeys arrayed in a neat line of honeyed glass. In every word I see a pair of wings. In every wing I’m frotting language, my bare thighs ink-shadow against the blank page. I have left home every time I’ve come close to making one. What happens to the (_____) when I admit I sexualize myself to say what’s impossible? What’s impossible. It isn’t a question. It isn’t a compass, no road-map that only points to my knuckle hair, my muffin top, my gapped front teeth. I hold (____) in my mouth like a too-big bite of stale yogurt; (_____) in my hands, a fishing rod in a bucket where I pull out star after star after star. Everyone gets to live in this poem, even the faggots. I am tired of being coy. I am tired of being. What words do I need, to live; what shape of language, knitted or hammered or left on a nude branch, my mouth cupping dove eggs, children left to the pity of wind. My lips tankard my hands. My hands mugging (_____). When I pathetic fallacy, I mean it: the clouds are a thousand blemishes on the eating-disorder sky; the willow trees branches rise up to blanket (_____), some poetic fool sleeping beneath the thousand unformed violins strung with summer leaves. These nascent, nadir days, these bright apocalypse days, my relationship to hope the same as a soccer mom’s to her minivan’s brake pads. Again, I’ve made a home. Again, I’m bilingual in almost. Next time, wink on my nose tip, constellations bubbling my cheeks, I want to be anything: your moon, your sun, your daughter. (_____) means as you read this, I’m gone again, alive forever. I’ll survive either way. I’m knocking on your door.
