DISSOCIATION TRIPTYCH

 1.

I’ve built a world inside the world
so as to never have to touch the thing directly,

as if I’m playing a game of telephone
with my many selves & their conduits.

In theory, I am alive, 
I have the capacity for joy.

I eat raw oysters, feel the sand
between my teeth. 

I see myself from a great distance, 
as if I’m one of our many dead with nothing 

better to do. Once, in another life, 
I would have called this divination. 

2. 

Don’t you think that if I got any closer to it,
even an inch, this living would burn 

right through me? We’re told 
not to look directly at the sun, but who 

hasn’t stared anyway, just to see,
& then looked back around at our world, 

in which, for just a moment, everything 
appeared bright & impossible & haloed?

3.

The condom breaks. All the dark birds
I named for myself take flight. 

What I thought I wanted isn’t what I want, 
not like it once was—no, I couldn’t swell 

like that again, becoming a planet 
as the weeks dragged on, orbiting my own 

amassing fears & prophecies. All this time, 
I’ve been convinced there’s a center—

but what if it’s all just the husk?