The garden the previous tenants left is abandoned save for a handful of peppers hanging on tenacious thumbing their flesh at the heat I roll our trash cans next to them I am replete with June High noon I am convinced there is something medically wrong with me My voice has been hoarse for a month My digestion off I wake up in the early hours of the morning with my heart beating like a hundred clocks The sun is a heavy hot smock curling over my shoulders There is a pocket inside each of us that pushed sharply enough could pop could ask us to take the knife out of the kitchen and plunge it into the dirt until it hits bone When I am alone I can hear it It wants me to feel that sick sad yes Severed roots hissing through the mess in my palms Let us now undress the world Let us peel off its crust its mantle its outer core Let us find the poor sore soul at its center Covered over in grief and triggered and worn to its own tiny world bone Let us reach in and draw it out through the blood and muscle and pulsing skin Transplant it somewhere inside ourselves Holding on Lying down in the middle of it all Tall tall bodies exposed to space Only then will this place feel like home
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