when you try your best

and I'm not really sure how to start a sentence anymore,
but I suppose I should dedicate the hemic red of my hipbone
to you.

After all, no one ever died from lattice-lines
etched into their pelvis, did they.
In fact, if I lay on the floor just right
at 2:53 am, the Venetian-moonlight-slivers filter down to cover me,
and you could almost imagine the hypertrophic gills in my wrist
as figments or misguided shadows -
gasping, just barely.

And I know it's something hard to believe,
but sometimes I sit on the ground with my arms around my knees
and my knees to my chest and my chest going thumpthumpthump,
and I just listen to the noise,
feeling life bulging against my temple like a migraine:
a bounding, beating, bludgeoning pulse against my skin.
And then I lay my chin on my hands
and my hands on my knees and I close my eyes,
and I listen
until I can hear the birds singing.

And then I sleep,
letting all the lines run through me,
numbing the agony of my spine like
a shot of tylenol, straight to the bloodstream,
but I do not dream
unless it is violent and something crashes
and someone dies, ten inches from where I stand, petrified.
It is a metaphor,
and no one ever died from those either, did they.

.
I suppose lunch and dinner are yours as well,
though I wouldn't give you breakfast.