Plastic Bag from Corner Store Laments the Self
When they finally find me all sprawled in the limbs of this tall oak who can’t look me in the eyes anymore, I’ll ask that simple question of myself, where I might be taken, or take myself, when the power lines quit humming their work songs to the fading red & black & blue graffiti lining the underpass where I spent my youth grazing, or when the moon turns blood-red & maudlin & coughs me back up on the mangled Chesapeake shores. And when they ask why I’m there, I’ll slouch my shoulders. And when they ask where I’m going I’ll quote the sky again. I learned at birth to smile where my teeth are not. And I learned after: everything that opens is a mouth. Every mouth will spit you right out.
– Aliyah Cotton