I was certain dangerous men kept the poem in their beds. While they searched me, I felt the folds of the sheets for it. I traced the seams of the mattress while they weren’t looking. I checked the pillow cases while they slept. I was sure they had found it without me when they never called again.

~

Once, a stranger asked me for it. I handed her the change in my pockets and walked away. It wasn’t enough for a bus ticket or a single metaphor, so she threw it hard at my back. A nickel drew blood. I left it spinning on the sidewalk and took my debts with me.

~

Twice, I absentmindedly braided the poem into my hair before I cut it all off. It insisted on growing back. I questioned my femininity. Other times, lonely, I chewed on it in a corner while everyone danced or loudly made love. I stuck it under desks and chairs, put it inside an old receipt and slipped it in a trashcan.

~

Each year that passed, I bought myself another blank journal. I parted the pages with a red ribbon. They sat on my shelf, full of quiet and hunger. Every time I re-arranged them, the paper asked where the ink was. Where was the tree? Where had the forest gone? Even the sun.

~

The poem lived its own life without me. It grew long legs or wings. It broke out of locked rooms and took a baseball bat to the cars on the street. It searched for boiling water and bear tracks and snapped electrical wires. Caterpillars ate all its leaves. It looked like feet turning blue, like wadded up scripture, like the last millimeter of a wick burning, and all the things I felt when I looked in the mirror. While it was out there, it was just like God.

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