The walls are painted cowboys
and perforated with bullet holes.
I sleep-in to hide from my tears,
the double-barrel lens of waking.
A soft violence of light uproots me.
Morning ritual: a kindling of lead
mining the blood buried in my gums.
Prayers rise like raptures, settle
the eyes’ flickering filaments, pluck
hostilities splintered in the mind.
For a rider, absence is a horse
on the open prairies of whispers.
I move through this world as absence.
Diagnosis galloping through me.