Mother did you know I would
grow old alone?

That the crevices on my
face fell into the street

with used syllables?

Tomorrow you said
No
To my first boyfriend.

Mother did you know I
wouldn't care. Your scarred

breast
was not my fault.

The trail of your
Epithet does not hurt
As much as this

Old age
When you
tried to

sell me


Caroline Shank
12.24.2024

They call  me 24 watts
Just a little dim.
They like a bit of banter
My proper name is
Bill.
I Have a sister
She likes to eat cake
Her name is
Victoria Sponge
And is skinny as
A shovel.
My brother Jack
Lived in a box
When you took
The lid off
He stayed
where he was.
We all had the
same mother
But had different dads
Mum just liked a change
We’re happy about this.

We usually say
"step into the light"
when there's
nothing but night
But do we say
"step into the night"
when the light
is so bright
that it not only blinds
but burns out our eyes?

When extremist's
play their games
to blind our
sensitive eyes
it doesn't matter
if they're using
darkness or light

It's all the same
if you're snowblind
or just left alone
in the dark
Whether it's
viral or bacterial
it's still an infection

Feeling our way
in the heavy black air
too thick to breathe
Fumbling around
in the light gray air
too thin to breathe

Caught in the loop of
groping the walls of our
minds in twilight
Struggling to refocus
in moonlight
Then so exhausted
by daybreak
that we sleep it all off
until dusk

Too much darkness
Too much light
Too much cold
Too much heat
Too much pleasure
Too much pain
Too much sunshine
Too much rain
You can have too little
or too much of anything.

You call me your dog,
your *****, your fool,
hurling words like stones
to shatter my heart.

I wag my tail anyway,
smiling through trembling lips,
fetching scraps of kindness
from the shadow of your hands.

You call me useless,
a beast beyond learning,
but I only want to please you—
to sit, to stay, to love.

Even as you turn away,
your voice cracking the whip,
I crawl through every wound,
bearing the weight of your name
like a leash around my soul.

For to be your dog
is still to be near you,
and I, the fool,
would bleed to feel you call me mine.

there’s these words
that we used to whisper in secret
words that we claimed to be ours
now I find myself haunted by them
they are just words after all
words that used to be meaningless
before they found you
words that take me back in time
to a place where I loved you

If you're not the fighting type
Don't put our hearts in the line

I’ve met a beautiful woman,
her face native to a land
that’s not mine
but I would still recognize it.

There’s no second thought about it:
she’s native by blood,
by eyes,
by cheekbones,
by the warmth in her skin,

a warmth that transcends
her shirt, my shirt,
my skin,
finding its way toward my soul.

Lightning strikes twice
campfires and oven mitts.

What a disrespectful way
to love someone,
but I wouldn’t wait
to love her.

Out on the fence line
two squirrels
dine side by side
critter crunch and bird seed
seems to make them as happy
as chasing each other
around the trunk of a tree