Apocalyptic Scenario
When I woke up in the morning,
my head had grown as large as the Earth.
Echoes evolving from single-celled beings
reverberated within it,
and it didn’t take long
for the sunset to pull on my hair.
The first thing I did
was to draw a line —
I fenced off my forehead and the corners of my eyes,
driving everything out
to the cliff edge where the waning moon gathered.
Whenever someone crossed the boundary,
I severed their ankles.
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Those
with severed
ankles lost their way of occupying space, and each time they passed through streets in ghost-like bodies, plants rooted themselves deep inside veins, and phantom pain began to sprout from the head of a child who didn’t pull the blanket over their feet, blossoming into nightmares of five toes, while dreams that refused to fall replayed like backward steps, breaths never bringing them any closer to the waning moon at the edge of the cliff.
A missing child was found inside my ear,
cradling a severed ankle.
When I nudged the ankle gently,
gold dust crumbled from the ankle.
The ankle,
(bats poured out).
Overgrown deaths crawled into my ears,
nesting in the misgrown ankles
that no longer fit me.
