I.

I, ticking-time bomb, blew up, splattering me

onto a balcony one night. Nothing’s been

normal since then. It was four in the morning,

I was hitting a bong; it was lockdown, we

wouldn’t have to go places again, hallelujah, not ever 

again. The heat had gone to bed late, but

the breeze was finally cool and the street

was nearly quiet, slept like a baby awakened

only by cop sirens. I was sitting on dirt 

and old bird shit, huddling in my hoodie, nestled 

between railing and sliding-door, and as I pulled 

the flame in, it lit my face up in a puddle,

and I looked into that grime...

in its hazy blue afterglow, distorted 

selfies of the friends I never made, dry leaves

in wet summer, memories of missing

my peak eyeliner years, gunpowder scratching

the back of my throat. I blew out 

and the smoke hit like mom’s bedtime mantras: 

“Drift downstream on your lotus, just 

breathe, in and out. Open your eyes 

very slowly, and imagine your breath 

is puffs of grey smoke floating

off. Imagine each little

wisp is a thing that you’re

scared about, or a feeling 

of guilt, something you felt in

a locker room, a fight you picked

at random, a role you were

pushed into. That’s the wind

on your face. Open your eyes 

again. There: it’s in

the clouds now, it’s gone.”

II.

As children, we would agonize 

over mosquito bites, scratch ourselves 

sleepless, touch hands to residually

hot light-bulbs, make crosses and pock-mark our skin

to get rid of the itch. We grow up and

still agonize, but that doesn’t shock us anymore. 

We forget the bite. The itch

doesn’t stop, our eye loses track 

in woven patterns. 

When you look in the mirror and don’t 

see your reflection, who is that 

looking back? It’s that thing 

where you take a duck and sit it

by a mirror. The bird looks at itself,

and it looks at itself, and it looks at itself,

and then crooks its head the wrong way and is a rabbit 

irreversibly. Where was the rabbit if not in the bird 

all along? That rabbit is red thread 

in grey weaves of the duck’s life, millions

of unscratched mosquito bites, a click and a click and a look

at that Etsy store—close that tab, why’d you click that? 

That rabbit woke up sun-kissed on a balcony 

one Sunday, tummy a whirlpool and body 

the detonate corpse of a duck: charred 

cartilage and wing-twigs,

simmering puddles of duck fat 

and blood, overcooked meat 

with thin feathers stuck to it, beak. In her paws 

the duck’s passport proclaimed

that this fowl’s forefathers had soared across

invincible oceans, hearts warmed by hopes 

of raping and killing at landfall, and that therefore

the yellow-bile thread of their crime would stand out 

each time she squinted to see her red pattern. The tapestry

glowed like uranium; she threw up, seized, plucked

her plumage uncontrollably, and as she caressed

every feather, running fingers down rows of prickly barbs 

on their way to the trash can, gunpowder trickled 

from their folds. After stashing it a while, still

de-feathering, not as hungover, that rabbit sighed

a big sigh, rolled up a five-dollar bill,

snorted that black powder. Then that rabbit

went on the internet, and that

rabbit purchased that sundress, and

that sundress is an arsonist.