Lizzy Burnam 🐞

Like a germ, I can feel this city
trying to cough me out 

I just want to put miles on my car 
with the windows down, blow smoke 
at the rear view mirror and feel 
no guilt about what I’ve left behind:

—the portraits 
in which I painted myself dead, 
rot-blue and bloodied

—the man 
who made me promise I’d return, 
now deceased, a playful haunt, 
sometimes crow, sometimes raven

—the kittens 
who clawed my heart out 
when I put them in the crate 

—the mountain
who rewarded me 
for stillness

—the MFA 
acceptance letter 
shredded 

—the body
I tried to kill by fire, by refusal, by 
dis int eg ra t i o   n 
into anything but myself

Not to go back home, but to return
to the wandering solitude, 
to follow those hard yellow lines 
across borders I cannot see, 
to infect nothing, 
to let go and join the wind, 
exist everywhere