bad decisions, big things like where
to immigrate, how many children are too many children, who
to love when you no longer love your wife or simply want
a blow job after eight hours on your feet, little things
like buying a car because it has fins, betting
next month’s rent on the slowest horse, believing
a psychic when she says hurry, invest everything
you’ve got in plastics or someday you’ll be sorry.
some warning,
with them it was always someday
and i’m worried they’ve come back for what they feel
should have been theirs in the first place, i feel
them shuffling their feet under my skin, unable to make
eye contact with each other, even now, even from this
distance, the boredom and embarrassment of death
after the cigars go out, after the card tricks go wrong yet again,
no wings, no horns, these are wayward molecules, outlaw
cells conspiring, saving their money to buy as much land
from my body as they can, subdivisions and supermarkets
swelling up around every nerve, numberless new cities
with noble intentions, this sequence of infamy
reverberating, moths reverting to caterpillars,
i am condemned to live
their lives all over again: wedding bells
on the wrong day with the wrong woman walking down the aisle,
the engine running with the garage door shut, four weeks
in an empty apartment and the phone has not rung once.
