Shrill.
It makes your hair stand at attention, like needles. It rattles your mind inside your psyche.
Who knew your own voice could sound so alien.
Damn you for standing on the edge of a cliff, then. How perilous; you should’ve picked a better spot for a picnic. What did you choose to pack, anyway?
Your own personal addiction.
A vintage bottle of memories: the white man’s bourbon.
Sure, I admit. The view was lovely.
The sun illuminated the clouds in iridescent shadows.
But it’s gone. It’s been gone, and you’re still here. Listening to the whir of your own emotional clock,
unwind.
And how are you going to get down?
So you might choose to trace it all back.
It started in a blackberry creek;
it ran down, rich and heavy like syrup,
dribbling down your chin
and onto the tile floor,
and you’d lick it off your hands
and run
blind and headlong
until you suddenly drove yourself to the asphalt and tripped
and they found you, where you remain to this day: breathless, collapsed in your mother’s arms.