Artwork by Lisa Burton

I am Falling

On scattered pages of lines crossed through. I am the record of nothing true.

From windows, limbs sprawling. Surrendering to pavement like a dream caught in the
afternoon. I am the wings that departed the nest a wisp too soon.

To my knees. I flail through it all—falling from the person an old, younger version of me
is counting on reaching—but still looking at each rupture like it holds the promise of a
new sun dawning.

Did you think I needed no warning?
Did you laugh as you anticipated my crawling?
How do you circumvent what is only faster falling?

There are wires and they wrap the world; without their coating, the threads fray like veins
exposed. But the wires cleave me at my finger, lock his wrists, dangle around her neck.
Like the red string of fate the wires bind us to live out our lives to parallel, separate
harmonies. We sit up and look down, tilting at the resonant frequency of blue led. That’s
just our ruling tensile force, the shadowy folds of your eyes tight as gears tuned. So how
come we’ve never managed to untie the knot even though everyone is tugging this
lifeline lost in time? I’m left here wondering if your screen tells you what I tell mine.

–Screen Rhyme

Where you see the trains cross
there you see how recklessly they crossed
in the cream-colored van, these eternally
“nice” and “young”
high schoolers. They can drive
for a little, but will never get far

past the liminal lights, a border
with eyes flashing. In absolutes they die—but
if you believe there is an order
of operations that carries us
through the misshapen universe

and you can adjust the physics
of a single crash—the gravest
of trolley problems—if
you believe this, then maybe
the train and van simply brush
mechanical hearts, never exacting
the engine’s ruthless toll.

–On the L.I.R.R 1982

There’s life stirring in my gutters.
There’s life, ephemeral as all things feathery,
nudging at the seasons while their mother comes
and goes. She does not delay takeoff to share reasons.
Opposite the glass, there’s always some thought settling.
But chicks will find it tiresome
to resist soaring—
and when they wriggle, like the worms they take
throat to throat, you see that one day they’ll lift
like a prayer; that, like us,
they insist on trying their own fragility.

–The Doves in My Gutter

He tells you they eat each other,
your tour guide with the floppy hat. He’s wading out
to prove that every step here makes you a murderer; but it’s alright
for him because he’s their great arbitrator
and because the microorganisms eat each other, after all.

What’s a little weight, you wonder—can the creatures
under distinguish soles? There is
your body, a clumsy, preteen
destroyer of worlds and there are the tidal sanctuaries
in the mud of a universe finished expanding.

And now when you sit to try and write
the murky ghosts of the diatoms and the dinoflagellates
cling to your thoughts
in the shape of all you have done
and all the wrong you are doing.

–Life’s a Bay

Read our exclusive Artletter

Painting by Catrin Walz Stein

Subscribe to receive the most awe-inspiring stories from ArtParasites, only available by ArtLetter.

Be the first to write a comment.