I tune the I-piano with my eyes,
learn to press down the damper pedal just enough.

They sterilize all the deer here
and then give them earrings, so you can tell.

Put on a smile like tinsel.
Cut my hair. No changes.

Catalog my sins, each tooth against my tongue like a rosary.
Count wrong, I start again. I go to all the Christmas parties.

Cave and have another drink,
crawl back into a cave that's safe.
Grime thrums around like the blades of a fan.

I bring the snow inside with me.

Throw up dinner again
and don’t think much about it.

I put on a smile like snow and snow and snow.

Here's an offering of a piano played underwater and the sound pressure brings.

Point being, there aren’t that many months within the last decade
where some wouldn’t have called me too thin
or hours where I didn’t feel like I was swarming out of my skin.

I slip things past my teeth, forwards or backwards, solid or liquid or gas,
a way of saying food or booze or smoke.

I am building a bank
inside, something like snow banking in drifts.
I drift into the sky like a bruise fading into a leg.

It’s hard to leave.
It’s hard to stay here.

The deer run through the woods with their stupid earrings.
I don’t own a scale anymore. I don't regret it.

Swarm on swarm, we hum to one another like the fridge.
We thicken like scabs
or snow pressed on snow.