Running Away From Your Problems: For Fun And For Profit

listen, i’m bad at speaking without my mouth
sounding like a flock of buzzards, a hungry halo of wings
overhead, but listen

i’m sick of being the apocalypse generation, i’m sick of
global warming and 6/6/06 and 12/12/12 and
september eleventh
i’m sick of the flinch that lives like a
slug inside of me, either a bullet or an insect
who is scared to come out of hiding
both are correct and both are why
i am dying
so

i’ve got a wagon out back hitched with all our dreams
and it’s gonna pull us along like oxen, i mean
we’re gonna chase the stars until they get tired of running
you know our ancestors used to hunt that way
i said, way back before we developed 18-wheelers
that swallow the bodies of trans teenagers
we used to sprint our prey down into the dirt and
howl with laughter and thank our kill for filling our
ripe young bodies, so

you and me, let’s get off of this planet where
i can’t breathe and in sixth grade somebody
chewed the left part of my soul off – it’s okay, i
learned about it in anatomy and it turns out
you don’t need that much to really feel
complete and
we’ll live off of dandelions and oxygen – it’s okay,
the doctor says that the heart murmur will
go away if i just stop listening

i don’t want to carry this anymore. i don’t want
our hands covered in blood. i don’t want the
universe as our judge. i want to close my eyes
and make peanut butter wishes into jellybean wells and
laugh at the silliness inside of myself and not wonder
if we’re all going directly
to hell

so i know that a coupla years ago we started
having to be scared about small things like
riding trains or going to see action movies or
texting and how in particular
your grades and your parents and your
house with a snowed-down goofy-smile
caved-in roof
are all set of teeth that are
wrapped around your ankles,
beartrap,
rusting
but you can shake it off, okay, and if you can’t,
cut it off,
okay,
and if you can’t,
carry it with you

put away the falling skyscrapers that live in your spine,
stow your fear of planes and of strangers and of
high-up places, let’s just leave

let’s build our own cities where marathons aren’t scary
and where people don’t sink on cruises and where
nobody burns down the libraries before we can read through them
and where art museums are never an open wound and
no kid has to worry about whether they’re safe when
they go to school

listen, i only got so much time before i remember
all of the responsibilities that are tied like
seaweed around me. you know, i distrust the ocean
because they hide things in it, and i hate
waiting because if you’re around long enough
the jellyfish find you and wrap you in lightning,
but i like the idea of a new beginning
and maybe i’ll even try beaches again

listen, i know when i speak it sounds like
maybe i’m a little disorganized and
all i want is a world where worrying isn’t
second-nature but
please
send us a spaceship i’ll call mother earth
and tell her that we’re all grown up and it’s
time to leave home where our cousins
are burning children in cages and our fathers are
invading nations and our sisters are all
weeping, open-acid faces
just
come away somewhere none of this
is happening and last night nobody asked me
why they are even alive and the night before that
i didn’t think about one day living paycheck to paycheck
and the night before that i didn’t wonder about
if i’m ever gonna really make it

please. can’t we bury our problems where
their bodies won’t stink can’t we live out there
on saturn’s rings can’t we be like old
homo erectus
running so hard
nothing can catch us.

By Raquel Isabelle de Alderete