AND

And I wonder

what the moon wants

as she rises,

and why I start

so many poems with “and”.

I think it’s because

I’m scared of

endings and beginnings,

but the middle

makes me feel safe

like blanket forts and

hiding in closets

which I still do

sometimes when

I miss my dad and my brother,

when the world

seems so dark it might

even swallow the moon

in one big bite.

I like the cold because

it doesn’t remind me of drowning

as most everything else does,

at times.

“Write what you know,”

they say.

Ive noticed

my stomach hurts

when Im angry and

my head hurts

when Im stressed

but knowing this

doesn’t seem to change

a goddamn thing.

Knowing isn’t enough.

I saw you

look up from your phone

and stare at me

so I stared back for awhile

until our brains called

us away to our facebook posts-

our techo-reality,

which slumped us over

and sucked out

our eyeballs

like thick milk through a small straw

until we saw

nothing at all

except stars on a screen.

And the moon

was forgotten,

the page blank,

the earth ungrounded,

the sea calling out to us

yet left unheard,

the cancer spreading,

the end of the world,

unless knowing

became doing

and we looked up

in time and laughed and

then sighed,

holding hands

through the night,

shaking with anarchy

on our mouths,

screaming into the naked dawn

together.