The Freedom to Live

For years I was raving delirious—
Van Gogh’s ear attached to my head
& a stockpile of Virginia’s riverbed rocks
weighing against my heart.

Every crack in the sky
broke my back into sections
of grieving notches made of
radio tubes & Mason jars filled with
all the Easter dresses I never wore
& the molecular structure of grass stained knees.

Each book contained a new personality—
a pair of speakers in my throat
recited wrote speeches of
dismembered romances
& headaches of knived snow—

biannually I tore myself to the foundation
& rebuilt with plot progressions
& stark heroines in my veins.

There was no recourse from
the millions of extra panic nerves in my mind—
no cure for the blood spirographs
I made on tissues like lip prints.

They molted into rust when
the dark circus pulled up its stakes & left—
now they only resemble the
six-fingered skeletal hand that
crawled into my sorry mouth
& choked my tongue for three months
away from a decade.