—IT’S PRETTY HARD NOT TO TOUCH YOUR FACE

                                        Proof That I Exist

I reside inside your bourbon stupor, a cloak of bone-dry rain between us, my severed eight-year-old head trundling over cobble stones where no road will bend. It’s impossible to trust advice or instincts when the ground has acid reflux and there’s a nail gun monogramming an aria on my thighs. So now I walk with a curdled gait, my small hands speaking Russian or Arabic. Tomorrow I’ll be nine and it won’t matter if the moon acknowledges me. You can throw a party for some other son. I’ll laminate what’s left of me on a torn-off shingle, skitter through the sewer grate, sink or swim, alone again.