Monarch
2 Minutes Read Time
Inner Sunset
San Francisco
2019
I would be ashamed to die this way: monarch
pinned to his back seat, ashamed
for my last light to be this tapering August,
this avenue pressing through the fog
of the blindfold the man’s fashioned
to keep me unseeing. The turn
down Frederick: streetlights, more
pins, I feel them prick my skin. This isn’t
the first time I’ve felt the hands
of a man knotting & unknotting
my life, absolved
of name, story, & volition. Years ago,
I dreamt a handsome sketch artist opened me
like an unmarked casket, marked
the topography of my face with graphite
until I woke. That tiny snuffbox I’d spent
the whole dream inside, the only one God had
for me—a genuine snuffbox, rhinestones
mirroring the world, nothing more. That night
I’d flown & flown from Drexel back
to my dorm, through reverb & rain, wanting
to be anything but another
rain-soaked obit on the side of the interstate
in the morning. But this is different: years
later, country crossed, mirroring
my world, nothing more: anxiety, lightning
inside a parked trailer of horses, stirring
all night. Different: waiting for the man to turn
into his driveway—for garage lights
to flower, gallop through sheer
fabric into sight. Waiting for the sputter
of his engine, the cough & calm of the car arriving
as if from another boy’s nightmare, the sudden
opening of a door, sudden tenderness
as he lifts, then cradles, then carries me—
room to room—until the union
of olefin and skin, the scissoring
of the blindfold, too tight to untie. Opening
his mouth, his perfect teeth—each command
bright & sharp as a retriever’s bark, slit
after slit through the scrim of fog
until even a sketch artist wouldn’t know
what the night had become.
Read more from Issue 18.2.
