Asphyxia

Breathing
against my will
hoping
for another tomorrow
which might be different
it could be still, couldn't it
couldn't it be silent?

I love the way I make my capital J's
because it's how I start your name

and I want nothing more
than to make the life I dream of
and to have you dream of it with me.

For my Art Nouveau self to mesh with your modernism

for open spaces and French revivalism
to blend in beautiful ways.

For Brooklyn and the suburbs
to begin to matter
for the collective and objectivism

For Nero Wolfe
and prestige

for everything that has ever mattered.

beauty and the obscene.

Original world.

So I'm half convinced I've died a thousand times.
every time you get nervous about the spiked fence on the church next door,
slip on the ice and get it through the eye.
but it's the infection which kills you.
you have to rip yourself free.
takes more courage than I own.

every time you think your headache might be a stroke.
it is.
it was just in another life.
I've died so many times and done nothing for it.
so many funerals I've never bothered to plan.
I want to know what those worlds look like.

so many worlds I'll never see.

what makes this one so special
that it's the one I spend the most time in?
what makes this my primary?
is it my crime scene? the source of my vindication?
or somewhere in between?