On the scorched Phoenix curb—

I watch:

a strangling, a mangling, a lightning strike touching its landing gear down

over flesh already scarred, the love already branched out across the skin

in its pale spirals.

The floridity we can’t talk about

spills out of the side wound too fast, 

because you know this

all already, you are here on repeat like a trapped divine omnipotence,

you’ll get over it, you always do, and don’t give me that

not this time crap because you always do. It’s kind of annoying, actually,

how many times you have gotten over it, and we haven’t even reached floridity yet.

We’re still, unsuccessfully, having a conversation. Stop stalling, or your trauma

will have itself a fully developed brain before you commit to coping—and then, well, who knows?

Too late, lost cause?

Game over?

I get it. When we adjust the phrasing,

it comes out too multifaceted; the print is just a little bit too off,

only a little jarring,

only a little jarring of my soul to sit out on your shelf,

but we won’t go there yet, we can still adjust the text, polish it up,

sell the story. When we fix it up, tune it into another frequency &

unravel its familiarity into some unmusical instrument strung with severed cords,

it does not have two contrasting definitions, it reads 

we cannot get endure this & remain.

Wake up! You’ve been in a coma for twenty years,

and while you were out your entire family died in a fire and also

there was a zombie apocalypse and also

all the birds disappeared and the outdoor silence is too overwhelming now.

Some say if you lean into the absence far enough you can hear the answer to every dilemma

the universe will ever etch up for you, but I’m just not very superstitious. Besides, I think we’re just unsewable, anyway, too thick to penetrate. Wake up, please.

For the love of God, wake up. In the name of God, wake up. I’ll do anything. I’ll 

embrace the floridity if it gets you to bring her back. So I can’t control myself anymore—

so what? They pre-planned the excavation, made a whole binder

and everything, cremation orchestrated

down to the last tabbed & laminated page. It was always 

going to happen like that. I’ll do anything, I’ve embraced it. I’ll do anything,

I’ll even ask the Unspeakable Horror to move if it’s still alive, and then I’ll ask 

the Unspeakable Horror a favor, and then I will tell the Unspeakable Horror every truth

the universe will ever etch out for me— see, I’m selfish and I know too much and I see what 

cannot be seen—and I know the Unspeakable Horror will never love me back—

there will be no grand union-decimating gestures even if the delusion sounds convincing

when I’m off my meds—

I probably shouldn’t call it or you an Unspeakable Horror, but what else is there to call the haunting? I’m sorry, it’s just all too much, it’s just all blurring together. I can’t say it. I’m a child’s rhyming poem, or you are: Unspeakable Horror #1 holding hands with Unspeakable Horror #2,

swirling in circles on the playground, overjoyed. In the original tale, if you look closer, between the texts—if you read too much into it like you are so very skilled at doing—-

they’re not dancing, they’re actually sparring. The first Unspeakable Horror has a knife to

its counterpart’s chest. The second Unspeakable Horror is planning another heist. It’s 

going to strike soon and then I don’t know what will happen, I can’t see that well. All I know is that

one of my inner worlds wants me to adore it all,

even if it hurt, a cinematic extracted torture scene,

but I’m only halfway there. I’ve completed every level

& now here is the last battle: I am just too good at adoring the beautiful parts, because it is so easy

to adore the horrors when they take on that particular false frame, the daydream

I’m devouring, and I am not very good at adoring the unsightly parts,

the ones they sent back to the creator. I don’t think anyone is good at that part. Go ahead and prove me wrong.