PROTESTATION

As much as I like to believe in the multiverse,

This is the world we’ve got, though we’ve folded it

With novels and poems, creasing it like a brain.

Misery nestles against beauty, the hopeless desire

To be good to you, to have been good and not needed

To have been told, anger and sleep and the necessity of waking;

It isn’t something else that pulls you from dreams,

It’s your mind, a collection of fireflies in a jar,

Garish on a PET scan. Restless. Everything is true

And false at once, everything is right and wrong,

Sky reflected in a pond’s still surface still the sky,

Still frilled with rich green scum. I’d like to put myself

Away like a doll on a shelf, but I know how malevolent

A doll’s real face is, how every domino moment

Presses against you, the ascendant, inevitable fear

It will begin to move, its throatless voice always your own.