* * *

There is nowhere left to leave this.

There is only the aerosol paint that is not yet graffiti.

A room of us is only one step from being a wake.

Are you awake yet? I am not quite dead either.

Soon enough.

Just gonna leave this here.

I open the box and place everything inside it. I keep this box high up.

You can't see the box but I know you could touch it.

I hope that you don't know to reach, so I wait for you to turn your back.

I cannot show you the pieces which are dying.

I hold my breath and wait.

On Thursdays, I prepare the graves.

You help by placing tiny flowers on the mud.

FUCK! No, no that's not it. That's not it. FUCK! Okay. You can do this. Let's see. Here we go.

There is nowhere left to leave it.

There is only the pre-graffiti paint.

A room of us is only one step from being awakened.

Are you awake yet? I am not quite awake, not quite dead, either.

Soon.

I'm leaving it here.

I open the box. Place everything inside. Keep the box high up.

You can't see the box. But I know you could find it, if you looked.

I hope that you don't look. I wait for you to turn your back. Then it's my turn.

I cannot show you the pieces which lay dying inside.

I hold my breath. I wait.

On Thursdays, I prepare the graves once more.

You help by placing tiny flowers onto the muddy plots.

No. NO! NO! NO! NO! Fuck me.

Let the knife inside me scrape stones raw.

Using an airbrush, I paint the stones grey.

I open the box and inside someone not awake.

I have gray hands and my hand leaves gray marks on their hands.

I leave tiny stones across the stains.

With a flower, I am a little bit taller. From here I can see inside a grave.

I am looking for you to wake up.

Soon. Enough. (both?)

**I want this bit to be really sad -- but in a way that makes the reader feel hopeful. Come back to this**

There was nowhere left to leave this and it was too heavy to walk with.

I'm leaving. Here.

I open the box. I place everything inside. I keep it. I keep it. I keep it.

You can't see the it but I know you could touch it. Touch it. (both?)

I hope that you don't know how. I will wait. I wait.

I cannot show you, the pieces, how they are dying.

I hold my breath. Let's wait, together. Together

On Thursdays, I prepare the graves. Together. I wait.

You help. You place tiny flowers on the mud. Together. You help. you help. i wait i

Pick the flowers back up. That was a bad idea.

The flowers are soft in my hand and the color leaks out as I squeeze the petals.

I color the skin around your eyes. I paint your lips.

You cough as dirt from under my nails falls into your mouth

you say you have eyes the color of shit

maybe so, but listen

when you smile, they fold into little navels

I'm reminded of raspberries and newborns laughing in their sleep

when you smile it’s like a naval battle

My eyes are shitty. Maybe I need glasses. Or I should eat more blueberries.

My eyes are shitty. Maybe I need glasses. Or I should eat more blueberries.

When you smile it’s like you just sunk my battleship

When you smile it’s like you just sunk my battleship

We are at all at our stations

In a big naval battle sometimes it’s chill though like we’re not always fighting but joking and eating raspberries and playing battleship

Then other times we are torpedoing each other

Like I’m just going to leave torpedo here

When something new appears it is like yes of course obviously but before the new thing appeared it could never be imagined. This is a poorly formed thought. Perhaps I should eat more blueberries. Or less psilocybin.

Anything new is a torpedo

[wtf am i doing]

someone recommended me blueberries and psilocybin once. i ate too much of both. i fell into the moon and shit blueberry skin for days. my poetry has suffered immensely ever since. i have not composed a poem in three years. i should write this down

you sank my destroyer, Miss Honey

thousands of pounds of blues berry me

and an uneaten donut




a man the size of a chicken

my condom-wearing assailant

an unexploded bomb with the heartbeat of a whale

dreamy, why didn't you

deglove the lunatic moon

I can't sleep

Sometimes i think about getting degloved - and how there is love in that word and it doesn’t sound so bad when you just say the word like someone is depantsing you like haha got your glove 🧤 but you’re left with no skin on your middle finger 🖕🏻 like dang got me. Sometimes i worry im gonna wake up and shave my eyes

Ever feel this way?

Foxglove is something too

It’s a fox with gloves

*drinks psilocybin tea begins children’s book about a fox wearing gloves that gets degloved and eventually dies alone in a field and becomes the purple flowers of wild foxglove

*shaves eyes

FRANKLIN THE FRIENDLY FOX AND HIS GREEN GLOVES
a children’s story

....

One morning Franklin woke up hungry. So he took a walk through the meadow. Something caught his eye. It looked like a purple elf holding a gray umbrella. But when Franklin got closer and smelled it, he realized it was just a musty old mushroom. Still Franklin the Friendly fox was hungry. So he chewed it up and swallowed it.

Franklin also ate an acorn, a wild strawberry and a baby mouse. Then he noticed his green gloves (brrr it was chilly this bright morning) were glowing.

My oh my said Franklin my gloves look brighter than ever this chilly (brrr) morning.

The meadow looks bigger and more ripple-y than ever too. And oh haha Mr. Mannfred’s barn looks more ripply than ever before too.

Mr. Mannfred’s barn rippled. Fucking ripply said Franklin the Friendly Fucking Fox and laughed at his bawdiness. His Bawdiness. Tee hee hee. Franklin felt like he felt that time he eat that rotten peach. Silly. And like a bigger version of himself. More ripply.

🦊 🧤

(Franklin and his green gloves)

Franklin the Foxy Motherfucker couldn't feel his hands. He panicked and pawed through the fallen leaves, but he couldn't find them.

"The sun is melting," slurred Franklin. "I'll freeze to death without my green gloves."

Franklin mashed through the fractal forest. He could see colors for the first time. Greens and yellows and reds splashed through his skin and mutated his brain. Franklin the Friendly Fox was tripping testicular cancer.

He saw a little old cottage made of gingerbread, cakes and candy. He splintered through the fruit leather door. It was warm and dark inside. Franklin sighed a sigh and settled down. But a shadow sprang up and a little old lamp flared, illuminating a little old lady.

"Wut the FuCk re u doeng inm'FUCKIN lileolhaws u peez ov sheit STREETRAT beach?"

The little old lady grabbed a semi-automatic assault rifle off the bedside table and pelted Franklin the Foxy Psychonaut with hollow point black licorice.

Franklin pounced. Franklin the Friendly Fox bit into her little old turkey neck and shook the little old lady until her little old spinal column snapped. He was about to eat her face, but there came a knock at the door.

"Gramma, it's me! Little Red Riding Hood!"

"Shitshitshit," muttered Franklin.

He hid the little old corpse under the covers and put on her little old nightgown.

"Come in," he croaked.

Little Red Riding Hood entered. She had just turned eighteen. Her high-waisted short shorts could barely contain her mature adult donkey ass.

"Gramma, what big eyes you have! Have you been getting high again?"

Franklin didn't know what to say. Little Red Riding Hood smiled and reached into her picnic basket.

"You're good, gramma. My boyfriend grows."

She puffed and she puffed and she ghosted that shit like a Marie Antoinette. Franklin had no choice but to hit that shit. The moment he exhaled, he heard fucking police sirens.

He covered his eyes and saw a bear made of canned food, a canned food bear. The canned food bear bucked its canned food head and leaped out the door.

Franklin gave chase, following the clank of the cans. He couldn’t see anything except a silver freckle. He didn’t know whether his eyes were open or closed, whether he was dead or alive. His paws seemed to leave the ground.

The silver freckle took flight and canvassed the sky, smoothing liquid aluminum over the jagged stars. Blue lightning licked Franklin’s spine, blowing icicles through his bloodstream. Wooden alphabet blocks flickered like slots, and he imagined that they spelled his fortune. Franklin had been waiting patiently for some oracle to say his name. He reached for the blocks. A giant splinter caught his green glove and tore his paw apart.

Franklin felt nothing as he fell out of the sky.

*

Dave Eggers x'd out of Neutral Spaces and powered down his laptop. His heart raced, but he remained calm.

"I need you plugged in checking Franklin's men and their families."

Alfred followed after him.

"Looking for?"

"Hospital admissions."

"Will you be wanting the EggersPod, sir?"

Dave Eggers stepped into the elevator and buttoned his blazer.

"In the middle of the day, Alfred? Not very subtle."

"The Lamborghini, then?"

The elevator doors closed. Alfred shook his head.

"Much more subtle."

*

Dave Eggers put the Lambo in cruise control at 200 miles an hour. He checked his hair in the mirror as he blew through a funeral procession. A crowd of nuns parted.

He checked his email. Elizabeth Ellen had emailed him again. He deleted the email without reading it. An email from his bank. Penguin had just sent him another million.

“Staggering,” he muttered. “Computer. Initiate pogo.”

A little boy sat in bed. His father was reading him a bedtime story, The Road by Dave Eggers. It was the greatest story he had ever heard. He wanted more, but it was finally bedtime. His dad tucked him in and kissed him on the forehead.

“Dad, is Dave Eggers real?”

Dad chuckled.

“No, no, son. There’s no such thing as Dave Eggers. No one man could hope to be so perfectly perfect. But he’s something to aspire to. Dave Eggers reminds each of us that there’s a greater good. If you’re lucky, you’ll be just good enough to shine his shoes when you grow up. I wasn’t so lucky, but then my best friend from high school is a methhead now.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

Time is a flat circle, son. I heard that on a popular show. Goodnight.”

Dad turned out the lights and the little boy gazed out the window. He thought he saw a salt and pepper Lambo pogoing through the forest. But he wasn’t sure. His eyelids grew heavy.