Samantha

Running

Running

FUNNING running

Funneling grape soda and cranberry juice through a lemon squeezer

Why not?

It’s all pointless anyway.

Birds fall out of the sky like

M&M’s-colored school buses lying dead on the side of the road.

Palm trees are burning on beaches dirtied with cigarettes

And your laughter.

I knocked on your door

Through the peephole I almost saw

(or almost dreamed I could almost see)

Your eyes greener than supermarket flowers waiting to bud—

not sprayed enough with fertilizer water, yet.

I thought

That if you let me inside I would find you playing the piano

that couldn’t fit through the door

The one

that fell down the stairs and broke in a thousand screams

(almost killing the deliveryman—who

Sent him alone?)

So now I’m in my kitchen

Pouring citrus and sweet purple and bloody red vibeliquids

Into a McDonald’s cup (paper, untarnished, seven

and a half months old),

Not watching you.