& I don’t even know what to do with myself. This is not a matter of when / I am going to ice my cake, or when I am going to stop pretending / that none of us exist in real life. I exist / in real life. That is something you have / to understand. I am the biggest success story I know. Tomorrow, I will buy out / an entire bakery. All of the cakes / will have my name written on them / as chocolate gold. We are all celebrating the same / sort of misery. We sleep to get through life. I want to crawl / into a teacup & sleep forever.

& it was November, & I have never stopped telling lies. I don’t remember anything / about what it means to be young. I know everything / about my youth. We throw split limes into trashcans / to make them smell like our mothers. We carve candy apples / until they glisten. An imaginary afternoon / in October. I core the apples & I am the one / who plants the seeds. When saplings / pop through the soil, I am the one who is congratulated. I am responsible / for all this life. I bow.

& teacup pigs. Thank God / for saltwater taffy. Thank God for coffee in the rain. I am learning to love myself & it is happening / quickly. I am using a fake name so that I can pretend / to be honest. I know that makes no sense. I miss Jesus. I miss cheap / communion wine & stale crackers. What if that were all I ever / ate. One meal a week. New detox diet. I could persuade millions / of women to convert to Catholicism. After all, we need someone to thank for tampons & almond milk / & all those things I shouldn’t mention. This is a microphone / & this is me thanking Jesus / for foam fingers, fried dough, & sex during Fox News.

but not unless I am offered a raise. This wouldn’t be funny / if it were true. If I were to elope in Vegas / flanked by a herd of elephants, I don’t think people would be very / surprised. It is difficult to shock / the public. If you were to walk into a Starbucks in New Hampshire & order / a tall iced dirty chai latte with extra soy milk / & I were the one to turn around & serve it to you / would you be surprised? I promise / to spell your name right. I promise to hand you a straw / so you don’t have to get one yourself. You’re welcome. I have never been to college / & I’m smarter than most people. I know exactly / what I’m doing.

when Neo realizes he’s the One? Not quite a god, but something / close. That is how I feel / every time I wake up. I dream of working / at a grocery store. The type of dream that lasts / decades. In it, I am waiting / for someone to know who I am. To notice me on a street corner / & scream my name. As if it’s a good thing / when it’s true. There is a difference / between publicity & privacy, but I don’t know what it is / anymore. In dreams, I sleep alone.

& you thought I had disappeared for good. Some sort of steaming / ghost. I could never be a ghost / because I don’t know anything about the moon. I know nothing about children. This is all / one big true story. I could warm my hands / by sitting on them. Leather seats. I could drive / to Alaska, but I still wouldn’t even / be gone for good. There are three mugs of coffee / in the cup holders. One for me, one for you, & one / for my ghost. That is what I call / a holy trinity. Especially because / two-thirds of it is me. When I came home, you smiled / & covered your eyes, as if I were a burning bush / blossoming with roses.

but sometimes it’s too foggy. Winter nights, I sit on the floor naked / with all of the windows open / & it feels like the air is eating my skin. The second best feeling / in the world. Sometimes you can see the moon during the day, & I’m not sure / why, but I like it. By June, the clouds are being divas again, & there’s usually a thick / blue rain, & nothing about any of that / helps me see the sky at night. I settle for neon signs / in diner windows. Open. Closed. Help needed. Always so much / help needed.

on an old clock radio / & I am sure that this is how I am supposed to live. I want the smoky white / early morning sky to open up / & swallow me whole. I want the entire world / to know that I exist. So many empty streets. I don’t know what’s going to happen / when other people wake up / & I’m not alone anymore, but I’m not / looking forward to it. If there were a way to kill some small section / of the sky, I would. If there were a way to flip off the sun / as it rises, I would do that, too. The violins swell.

with the penny board, or the girl / with the blue tattoos. If I were driving down the street / in a red convertible, & they ran in front of me, I don’t think / I would stop. There aren’t many people / I would stop for. I am speaking very generally. Those blue designs, crushed / into the street. The thought makes me want to cry. There are so many things I would cry about / if I could. I spent this entire week / being sad about the boy / with the penny board & the girl / with all the tattoos, & there are other things / I am sad about, & I’m worried that I’m going to spend the rest of my life / being sad about them.

it’ll be another forty or fifty years before it turns off. I say this both as an estimate / & as a fact. I know a thing or two about music. I know something / about how to breathe deeply. Radiation / & sound waves. The entire legacy / of the human race. What’s left after all our libraries / burn. After every birthday cake in the world / melts. When you imagined the end / of humanity, I bet that’s something / you never saw coming. It will be somebody’s birthday / that day.