one night my friend pointed out

a darkened shopfront

with a disembodied pelvis

perched on a kitchen stool

one thing followed another

and i thought, “i am in love with her”

it was western oregon’s most doomed thought

from 2016 to 2018, for which it received

a bouquet of pink ranunculus

two casks of nitroglycerine

and a hand-stitched sash

the sense it made

was tectonic in scale

how could i not bury it deeper

than even my fear of extinction?

hobbled with secrecy, i scrawled

profanities on notebook paper

and fed them to a campfire

people thought i was trying to be funny

but i was trying to perform surgery

the neighbor’s parrot screamed all night

from the fact of being alive

or perhaps he had a dilemma like mine

a lone black wing beating

auroras out of the air

i named him ambulance dave

i burned my fingers

on the horns of my hips

and prayed for escape

i want group hugs in front of thai restaurants

that last longer than any human

would deem reasonable.

i want a clothbound book

with deckled edges to record

all the unbelievable signs i’ve been reading:

handy hands, swan island dahlias,

largest reptile show in the northwest.

i want wooden chopsticks with my takeout

instead of a plastic fork though what i really

should want is consistent metal cutlery

for all my meals. i want more

lanky androgynous metal guitarists

whose sharp dancing fixes me

in a fugue of orchid-white yearning.

i want more small stories with good endings,

like this one: chessie was walking and met

a brown tabby cat. upon realizing the cat

matched the photos on a missing cat poster

she called his human to say he’d been found.

oh, said the human, he’s an outdoor cat

and he’s been found for awhile now

but i haven’t taken all the posters down

because i forgot where i put them.

it was part of the local lore: people called in

regularly to report sightings

of the cat who was found, and found,

and found again. perhaps exponential foundness

could feel like this: i approach two friends

curled on a comically large beanbag

and ask to join them. our closeness

crescendos until our bodies

enmesh like figures in a klimt painting.

a toast to our squished angles

and luminescent patchwork.

a toast to stomach noises.

i want to climb a semi-extinct volcano

and tell the world about our clump.

i want to be the french braid

on an acrobat’s head.

oh child, your hair was an animal, preening on your shoulder like a fox. it had two bright eyes that roved around its body. when you ran your fingers through it, it made a low rumbling. what was that, asked your deskmate. my hair, you said. your deskmate twisted her mouth around. you’re a mental case, she spat. your hair hunted at night through tunnels and trees, and one morning it brought you a mottled egg. inside was a new feeling. it started with an a. you spelled it in the sand and pored it over. a-n-g-r-y. the egg imploded. your deskmate was running through the soccer field, and suddenly you saw clean through her skull to two structures inside like glowing almonds. anger was a net of stars around you, a lace of aluminum trusses. it was lightweight and silver and did not debase you, not for years yet. you threw back your head, and the soccer ball paused at its zenith. in the trees, animals licked their coats to a holy shine.