A Billion Burning Dreams

Dear Anxiety, Tell me what jilted tastes like. I want to understand the mark of your genius, the codex of your strategy. You have always had the upper hand in this civil war of silence that scuttles brain with grapeshot volleys

behind the whites of my eyes. You captured the flag long ago and claimed it as your own when I was a child. Do you remember how we used to play cops and robbers in our neighbor’s backyard? You were always the cop — keeping the peace, protecting civil liberties and freedom. Now I think you were the robber all along. Stealing away intimacy. Safety, comfort, sexuality. You got good at burying bodies, at planting evidence. A crooked cop, shining the brightness of my light in my eyes

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