Lizzy Burnam 🐞

but you can’t shake 	
my pride ! she 
says. an audience of everyone 
sends clap emojis
and purple hearts to demon-
straight support for
the possum-eyed witch, asleep
ashore an island 
of her own making: built 
with crumpled-up invites to join 
the party
	(even just
to sit mute and rummage thru 
the medicine cabinet 
if that’s what she prefers) 

but solitude is a hunger 
too great to satisfy ! she says
and loneliness is […] disorder

Facebooked into being 
a living blur a loving sound-check 
a cord in every outlet
I don't need a new hobby ! she says 
I just need more     friend 

requests to watch 
the chain-lock-checker 
perform 
the scavenged script 
of the backscattered reflection of 
the reflection of 
a busy street from a window seat, 
playing dead and dead-er than 
the latest funeral they fled to flood to feed. 
are there no snopes
for a fake        this deep?

overnight, the door blew open
with shouts from the auctioneer 
rattled her awake 
the near-comatose agoraphobe
with a new kind of stage-
	fright:
a hack in her veneer 
an unzipped code

gone girl, detonated. teeth ticking 
                 now
she is no small drop 
in a sea of unread bids, with two stiff 
thumbs 		        she claws
	to patch the leak
	to catch the

bugs 	these bugs 	they crawl
in thru the keyhole
and nest inside her lungs

witness ! she begs 

this	 heart 
large and awkward as 
an ostrich egg