Nothing is where it used to be.

I picked through the cardigans of a ghost

and found the moth-holes all rearranged.


They said that the farther you traveled,

the closer you came, but that was pure hackwork,

a campaign against the elderly.


I was out for a stroll when the sun

put a banana to my throat

and demanded my wallet.

This must be how the empire was taken,

I thought.


A poem about teeth knocked on my door,

dressed up as a salesman.

The price tags were still on his suit,

but you could tell he was an imposter.

I forgot about everything but the whiteness

of his face. Whiteness within whiteness like

a blank page or a watch face with no arms.


It felt right to feel like a starless night,

at least for now.


I put yellow sticky notes on everything

and they looked like flashlights

moving through a forest, 

though I didn’t know

what they were looking for.

Maybe they didn’t either.


A man told me aluminum never leaves the brain

and I pictured it like this, a swarm of flashlights

flickering through the darkness.