James Diaz
Not So Tough After All
I walk back inside
broken hand
skin fractal / lightning rattle
smallest stove / biggest bond of bone
starling staggering up
sketching out all the debris in me
chalk lines on pavement
filling in as a prayer—for tonight
you can’t afford to know too much about these things
where they come from
a streak of golden—a so-long kinda song
in scar light
and so I twist myself into a bird
under a burning bed
the moon is / half-way home
better than no home at all
it’s always uphill
ankle broke—broke—and fucked…
once I knew a thing
sometimes, I still do, I guess
each year gets a little longer
and somehow, despite experience, harder to bear
that’s how it is
you think you have forever
but you don’t
only it felt that way once
and here you are
broken bird twisted
stagger bruise light
blurred up along the interstate
when I’m gone—
tell em I left happy
and forgiven
and in love
with everything
that ever happened to me.
—Submitted on 08/29/2020
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their poems have appeared in Yes Poetry, Gone Lawn, The Collidescope, Thimble Lit Mag, BlogNostics, Poetry Breakfast, and other journals.
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