your blood pressure is good
today your heart rate is a little
high it's decaf so must be the sugar
i've been here a while now so everyone
gives me their sugar and i wonder
how i will do outside after this how will
i fill these wells inside me all my life i have
thrashed under lock and key but how
i love these locks, these lifegiving locks
but what about out there when those cars
like glossy scarabs sang like mermaids
will i give a new meaning to ambulance
chaser, will the Hudson be the river where
i waltz like Ophelia, wreathed in burnt rubber
or will i be alright will i be alright
will i rise like the moon who neither sets nor rises
but remains fixed in orbit slotted neatly in the cosmos
like a key prepared to tune the gravity of everything
we know. i remember something
i once read about how to survive stranded
at sea using oneself as bait to catch a fish
i'm dissociating
                         again. i imagine every word

that speaks to the past as another strip of skin,
every memory another pound of flesh lowered
slowly into the blue deep hoping to lure
something to save me from myself.
each time i open my mouth to speak i see
the blade, slice after methodical slice searing
skin from flesh, flesh from bone, a leg no longer
a leg. each time i open my mouth i want to feed
upon myself knowing full well it will not
sustain me and so into the ocean it drops
marbling the water with reaching tendrils
of red, spray of pink like a sunset. i wait.
i am patient. i expect nothing.