THE FLOATING DOOR AT INTERSTATE LANES ❋ Jamie Mortara

i must confess
i have forgotten what a fence looks like
when it ain’t a rental

i have forgotten the frustrating irony
that “razing” something
is to demolish it

i too worry
that i am a door
with nothing underneath it

that i am just
a single wish
inside of a wall

did Oedipus’s family honestly think
they could leave their problems
on a mountaintop to die?

you ever get a splinter
and watch your skin
gradually grow it out of you?

my father used to dig them
from my body
with a hot sewing needle

he used to cut trees
like a pained and reluctant duty
like he was putting down a wounded animal

i am so desperate to preserve
this monument
to failure

i am trying so hard to hide this stubborn building
like a rock tumbling around
in my stomach

and inside my body
there are beams
all unabashedly cracked

there is a lonely switch with two settings:
one side is for CARING TOO MUCH
the other side is for NOT CARING AT ALL

you can’t see her
but even right now
there is a little girl inside of me

she is flipping that switch
back and forth
as fast as she can