Nothing is Okay
and I don’t know why
I need to go into
a sweat lodge and talk
to somebody else’s god
I want to believe in
everything so much
in fifth grade at recess
I sit on the stone
wall and squish red
bugs with my thumb
I forget how to pray
without scanning the output
I extract poems from private
conversations with an icon
my babushka painted
my mom still wants to talk
about her father’s missing toe
and I dodge her calls
like sympathy smiles
I am in kindergarten and I hug
my friends too hard
and the teacher asks me why
I push crayons so fervently
into paper and I tell her I like
how it feels like velvet: loud
and quiet, soft and sharp
the boundaries
between these blur
and I am often confused
about how much I am
supposed to feel
by reflex I dull
the senses
I step out
of my mouth and decipher how
best to catch these fireflies
where to put them
what colors they might
live happiest under
if they bite
holding hands
with my addiction to sugar
the ambiguity
follows me around
like a dog
while I stir this lukewarm
pool like a coin
stuck in two options
schrodinger’s cat
forever exists
in this stillwater
before the answer
my flowery skirt
a merry go round river
sewn to my waist—a circular
flag facing upward, performing
for heaven’s fuzzy seats
lefter and looser
I’m untwisting a screw
to save my right leg
from running itself off
if you ask Odysseus
about the boar
I bet he gets quiet
and rubs the scar above his knee
unconsciously
what is a vile empty
but a vase split open
with soil bleeding from its belly
like a red carpet laid before it
into an endlessly expanding echo