“Keep your chin up. Don’t take your troubles to bed with you—
hang them on a chair with your trousers or drop
them in a glass of water with your teeth.”
–The Evening Democrat, Oct. 1900
Even Missouri means something to me now so, sure,
anything could happen. There’s a house in California
made of only doors so that you’re always going someplace
but somehow never there. It takes leaving to understand arrival,
just as health gets clarified when the tongue goes slack,
one arm game but numb. My first dead love rides shotgun
on night commutes through the country. His hand passes through
the stereo, so he changes the music with his mind. Erasure
again. I tell him how successful I’ve gotten but he doubts I’d be good
at death. I trust him and do not drive into the tree, do not drive
into the gap called Devil’s Branch, no matter how horny
for darkness I get. Chin up, he tells me, then turns back into
a cottonwood, limbs turned fluff borne by air. Chin up,
I look for clouds doing impressions of things, like even the sky
could have a crush on me. A plane, two planes, the people
inside. What if one of them is supposed to love me
and this is the closest to them I’ll ever be. I wear disappointment
like a prom dress I refuse to take off, a murder of seams.
It takes courage to be who you are despite all other recommendations.