COUGHING A BOWL OF BLOOD

Backwards from a hundred working back to a thousand a million and so on and so on it goes I go she goes on without me into the dark with her flashlight texting as the beam jiggles over where we used to walk like the time when words could convince us that things could grow into something wonderful or that it would all be destroyed and instead we have these things lying on the ground run over wrapped around violent swift replies since our heads can't do it can't even step into the chalk rectangle taking a bat to our windows on our empty eyes drawn by crayons melting in the desert. Nonsense burritos nor couches riddled with pee sprinkled from on low medium well dressed person staring at you because they have more lines more expressions rapidly starting to sound all alike and yet if you separate the shit with your hands mind you with your mind got to hand it to you there appears well it's already there nothing appears except what is already there never mind got to hand it to you hand you nothing there did it already and thus the conclusions reached by your DVD menu form a way around the shrinking room. 

She bent over the bendy straw and thought she noticed a tear along the angle-adjustable bellows and thought she saw her the one she used to be in class with in online college and imagined what she looked like until she sent her a friend request after a stream of commentary on fossilized families. 

Tense caffeine shades
alarm clock minefield
boots leering emptied
stiff laced eggshells 
anxious unraveling enigmas 
shredded DNA laundry


- Max Stoltenberg