Open C Minor
I breathe in open C minor,
sleeping on a mattress of strings,
every rib buzzes like a bad transmission.
This house grows its own weather.
Mold blooming in the corners
like green galaxies.
The ceiling fan turns slow, slow, slow as a sermon,
chopping the night into humid chapters.
I keep sticking my fingers in the ouch.
I woke up wrong.
Not broken.
Just tuned to a frequency
the rest of the room can’t hear.
Skull full of static,
body like a church bell hit in the dark, distant and eleven minutes late.
It either 4:11 or 11 something
The phone buzzes
like a mechanical cicada
warning that August is coming.
Heat already standing outside
with its wet animal breath.
Down the road
the ocean keeps repeating itself,
waves striking the shore
like someone knocking on a locked memory.
Tires brush against pavement.
Back where the waves keep slamming themselves
against the same old confession.
Back where the air sticks to the skin
like blame.
Not sure if I want to go back. We go.
I move fast through it all,
a body slightly ahead of its ghost,
a traveler sleeping between stations.
Strange place.
Strange season.
But the signal is getting clearer.
Somewhere in the static
the music starts again.
Open C Minor, strings falling off like loose clothes.
Exposed
Soon, back to the scene of the crime.
Back where the waves keep slamming themselves
against the same old confession.
Back where the air sticks to the skin
like blame.
Hot. Humid.
This fucking moon hanging over it all
like a bruise that learned to glow.
I almost don’t want to see it again.
Almost.
But something in me is already walking there,
barefoot, half-feral,
grinning through the rot,
ready to be broken open
or pushed through.
On the other side of this fucking worm moon
I am all loose wires and chaos,
a motel sign buzzing in the same ribs and zapping bugs.