Are you the leather bellows stoking fire or a boy gasping after a stray kite? Are you the edge-spar or the troposphere tearing it free? Are you streaked like malachite or pierced with stars? The wheezy, exigent container of the dim confessional or the passport photo booth, the flash’s glint? The sound of hammer-falls that miss the nail or warning sirens whining the storm’s name? The flesh-wound fresh and throbbing or the numb limb prickling back to life? Do you believe the good news most abandon as alt-fact? What else were you expecting to be asked? What makes you think you’ll make it out alive?
