Kristen de Kline #212 Winter 2016

I thought I was dreaming. Again. You said I look unhinged. I spent days staring down at train tracks. Parliament. Flagstaff. Melbourne Central. Was there always a screw loose. When it hit negative three my lungs gave up. I went through four blue puffers and wrote a thousand and one poems about broken things, pints from the sun and fucked up things that turn around. I knotted the rope to the fixture where the ceiling fan hung. At three in the morning I played with words that kept running away. I thought of my buddy whose neck was littered with scratch marks. Some days I wake and everything is splattered around my room. Blue and white mosaic shards. Pages torn out of books. The stems of wine glasses.  Yesterday's newspapers.  I thought I was dead. Again. But you could make out my breathing. Irregular. Wheezy. You said I sounded like an old man on death's door. When the sun returned my lungs came right. I danced around the boarding house. Sang along to Amy Winehouse. Dressed in black and bought a new fedora. I could feel my heart thumping. Again.