I’ve become the type to buy lottery tickets.
Feel lucky just to have made it this far.
I don’t have a set of numbers I play,
or a special coin for scratch-offs.
I use the fingers of this body
that has been hit by a car
then walked away,
had a man penetrate it as I slept,
then woke, and left without
the slit between its legs splitting
the body into two pieces,
labeled “before” and “after.”
I let the machine generate
numbers for me because my life
is travelling to the clouds. So much
up in the air. My life
is the fallen balloons, too,
drifting deflated atop the sea,
the guarantee—like buying enough
tickets to win. I’ve come out ahead.
My kneecap is shifted,
my thighs hold the memory of his hands, but
these legs, they take me
where I want to go, to the sea, to the corner store.