Braid of Maybes

I adopted Schrodinger's cat

and brought her home in a box

with fragile written on the side.

She sleeps on the edge of my bed

and leaves thin hairs on my sheets,

like wood shavings

on the carpenter's floor.

I think she bites me in my sleep.

I don't know; I never wake up.

But I see blood specks and freckles

on the underside of my arm

and I never had freckles before.

----

If I was the last person on earth—    

I wouldn't be.

The cities would be full

of gauzy golden people,

resplendent in their possibility.

My slanted ears would pave highways

on the tops of thunderclouds

thick with acid rain.

I would draw a passport 

on the back of the last newspaper

that reported the apocalypse, 

travel the world and say,

"I left my anklebones in my old boots,

but crawling only hurts a little,

and there's someone over the next hill.

There's someone over the next hill. 

There's someone—"

----

My mouth is an oven turned backwards. 

Fortune cookies chill my tongue

and collapse into dough.

I burn myself on the linen of the prophet's cloak,

cut myself on the sharp edges of a crystal ball,

and break my leg falling down the creases in my palm.

All of this

is just another way to say:

Don't you fucking dare tell me my future.

I need my hazy hopes,

my possibilities,

my maybe tomorrows.

The seams of my soul 

are stitched with their thread. 

Don't tell me my future,

because if I don't know that it's worse,

maybe it can get better.

(It's not going to get better.

But it could.

God, it could.)