Lizzy Burnam 🐞

Everyone loves the tired charm 
of those abandoned warehouse buildings, 
tired as a donkey worked to death
with timber on its back, a wagon 
on its tail. Everyone loves graffiti paint, 
indecipherable and melting
down those old brick walls. Not 
everyone, but the poets, the students  
and the hobos, those who know 
the place you sleep is not always 
a home. Everyone—I—know, 
anyway, which is hardly anyone; 
we all went downtown in search of 
sensory junk food and left 
when we found each other. I keep 
driving up one-ways, turning 
into the wrong lane by accident, 
narrowly avoiding accidents. Who cares? 
I’m in the lines. And people get out 
of my way, though they honk 
and chitter at me like mad squirrels
who followed my peanuts 
into a wire cage. I didn’t put it there, 
lady! Who knows what’s next—
pest poison? Lab tests? 
All their strange faces get stranger 
every day. I have nothing to say 
to you people. What do you want 
me to say? I tried every word already. 
I clung to them like vines on brick buildings
while you watched, you called them 
quaint, you let those buildings crumble.