by Lindsey Pero
How do we get to the places we are in?
Do our choices drop us here, like with a metal claw?
I want to be F-R-E-E
I want no pain at all, but tears
that cleanse me
that sing across my skin and
make a fresher slate upon which
I might exist
in a better way.
Holy
my heart is perpetual in its racing
to the top of my throat.
What is my will?
It hides in corners and on top of
large furniture
and under other things
because it knows I will never change enough
to move around
and look for it for a real way out.
There is an “F-R-E-E” that can only exist
between barbed-wire-quotation-mark-fences this “F-R-E-E”
it calls my name in high pitches that
rise up over the barriers and
smash head-on, and into view.
It leaves distinct bruises on my
arms my
legs never mind my
mind
my
oh this “F-R-E-E” it
runs back and forth and so
do I,
but our footsteps never coincide.
There is no melody or pattern
except falling and it’s always me this
“F-R-E-E” tricks with
an underneath hidey-hole that I army-crawl
below but which crushes the air sacs in my lungs
as surely as remorselessly
as dictatorship
as distracted parents
as high expectations
as elevator music
as tuna fish sandwiches
and diseases without cures without
here I am pinned here I am halfway between
where I used to be and this “F-R-E-E free free free free free”
of a supposed now there is a simulated movement that
harks upon approval and the sound of
funerals in quiet black ways.
Sometimes I want to roll, like a log,
down the occasion of a grassy hill,
like we all used to in her backyard,
but this time, I want to roll down first avenue
that way.
LOOK how I roll
look at the “F-R-E-E” in my eyes
right before I am crushed by a tour bus.
