Black-eyes birches on my mind when
Everyone else on this plane is sleeping
For forty rows they are passed out.
Embarrassing, drunken, wilted; their mouths
Dark chasms
Like my birch's slow doe eyes
The white skin around them peeling, molting.
The deep tissue color showing through
Matching the scab I got from wrestling a friend
In an inflatable obstacle course
Inflatable carnival bright colors sweating cotton candy--
Later, the boy from Connecticut told me he couldn't
Inflatable joust me because he was a pacifist
And I thought, I could be a pacifist
But I couldn't because
When my eyes gleam dark knots
And the white lines sing
Of being in boxes
I reach out a fist, not a branch.
And i punch and hit because my hand will hurt
And since it hurts both
It hurts none.
Something for nothing is magic.
I am itching, I am peeling,
I am broken but still growing.
