Mind

Before you shot yourself in the chest I had forgotten you. 
Visiting here after twenty-five years, false claimant of homeland,

I’m pocketing columbine seeds from the library garden.
How like me to make this about me. Your mother

in the grocery store moving slow and hunched among 
the frozen dinners. The joker you dated in high school—

was I wrong to see in you limitless potential?
But then we’re all beaten by something. How the methadone

was too expensive after the heroin, which was too cheap 
to refuse after the Vicodin, which was too necessary after

the accident—seven metal pins along your spine, 
which was a lovely spine, the spine of a swimmer,

your muscled willowy-ness occupying an entire province 
in my mind. How an idea becomes a kingdom. How even

imagination can’t keep the castle from being sacked. 
Catapult bombs, flaming turrets. One black cross

-bow bolt from the murder hole crashes
the escape carriage. Valiant may we be against ideation.

Read more from Issue 20.1.