The sensation returns of bones flying off

The sensation returns, of bones flying off
the handle, joints rubberized and fading

the heartbeat of a helicopter banking south
interrupts the mourning doves at 6. I am maybe

awake I remember being drunk at readings
where everything I heard was a way to

a future illuminated like digital streets peeking
up beneath David Hockney’s window

luminescent in unreal strokes.
The future now is a twin horizon that never

gets nearer, of living too long uninterested
like my grandmother, unable to read

because of anxiety; because you never
get a personality when you live for others

because now all those others are dead.

The alternative is obligations
unfulfilled and still not knowing if

what I feel is love not anger asleep in
desire; a stone in the stomach of a wolf.

By J. Freeborn

Biography:

J. Freeborn is a genderqueer high school teacher in New York.