Chrissy Stegman 🔈

Monday. The moon cosplayed me on Monday. I want to read a letter to myself but I am future-caged. Just some golumpki someone made once upon a time for someone in my bloodline. Tuesday. Nothing happened. Wednesday. I’ve become ashes or a dream of ashes or something that once happened. I overheard: Two weeks ago, there were crazy people out there, & I said: Are these people manic? I look up now on this Wednesday & what’s left is a tin can of the sky. Just my son’s feet next to mine & we are reading. It’s Thursday & I do not believe in prayer. I do believe in tenderness because it’s like a stoned dream. I see Jupiter above Venus below a crescent moon at the bluest hour. I must stop asking where the low entropy of the sun will take me. Friday. Someone says, No more talking. I agree. Saturday. I consider the things we might find in the junk drawer of a mind. I imagine the Ship of Theseus but it’s just dad jokes told by me to my youngest son. (This page is dimly lit.) A pile of feathers & Apollo in pursuit of Daphne without a moment’s pause. Sacred offerings & spiritual fires. An old pear tree blooming early in the shame of its blossoms – a pink hypnotic S marking its provisional existence. I’m sorry. I didn’t think I could, followed by one spaghetti Western painting above a grandfather’s chair, a coal stove with(out) warmth. The blood of a firefly & I am anointing my eyes when I am 9 & flare a mental image of myself running with a still life painting of fruit & a gun to my head while I flee with some Taco Bell in a paper bag from 1993. All three of my children & the understanding that they have never been afraid of me. It’s Sunday morning at 3:03 AM. Every cry has been counted. It’s being immolated by the spices of your ancestors. There is a secret heaviness at the head of a pin, but that heaviness also belongs to the kingfisher as it dives.