Public Republic

Becca Books

Photo: brains the head

I know I’m near.
Not so bad as some.
Here, I mean. Here ― whatdoyoucallit.
Wait, it will come.

I wanted to die in my own little head;
but after the ― clock?
No… stroke!
Stroke of midnight, that’s how I got there.
Here, I mean, to the Test Home.
I couldn’t do for myself anymore.
All the chopping and meaning was too much.

And then it went thump in my head again.

But I don’t just lay in my dread with it,
not like my friend who used to choke about it.
I do get fixed up
because what I drink
is not what I end up spraying.

Sometimes there’s a bird in my mind
all of a flutter to get out,
getting panicky, flying blindly,
breaking itself against my skull
until it drops down,
or gets out ―
kind of maimed, like.

Words are slippery as bars of hope.
But they use liquid hope here;
you can’t hold on to it.