This
text
is
a failed template
for
another text
a
failed attempt
to
linearize
I
want
to
sanitize
to
avoid
the
timing
required
to
go
back in time
I
think about attending
your
funeral
you
are
a
body that I will want
to
see dead
you
are a person
whom
I will always mourn
a
town means
something
small
and
it was
cold
room
cold
door
cold
kiss
cold
sound
I don’t like these conditions
saw
the raw
and
moved away
this
is a city
that
was before me
not
the inverse
which
started
this
dream
to
forgot
would
forgo
a
memory castle
the
one
lined
guards
parceled
and
proxied
in
2D rooms
I
wanted
a
rope like a throat
a
gravitational drag
above
the
giant
silky
stretch
of
written
sentence
I
sit inside of
gold
emitting forks
like
branches
your
genitals
giving
a certain
sound
pursed
two
lips
small
particles
a
lilac affluence
I
was twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
asleep
in
polished
syntax
psychotic
neural
light
grabs
me in
the
elevator
of
the library
as
you pull rope
veined
with
a
light blue soot
smile
posture
bulbous
on
the edge
of
your counter
I
open my legs
the
height difference
should
have tipped-off
the
last time
only
smallness
relative
to yours
knee-jerk
pullout
before
the blade
of
consequence
made
a return
to
the before time
impossible
The
preface is
too
long
to
include
in
its length
there
emerges
an
insignificance
I
want to
write
a sacrifice
an
auto-offering
I
am not bad
I
am
vicious
and weird
Rebirth is a
narrow passage
a boiled
ocean
a wreck
church
a bad history
desire
breaks
a
dew at the border
of
delusion’s shelter
imagination
a
singular
triumphant
sound
It was the last day. It was
1988. It was 2053. It was
1848. It was 1922. On another
plane, we have been married for
five
months.
Before the
world went sick. The
roof a servant’s
quarters. I unbuttoned
my shirt, you reminded
me. Said what I wanted –
you reminded me. This
is a text of reality. I
cried at lunch and then
at home because language
does this. Language creates
a void, and in that void, a
story unfolds.
Katie Ebbitt is a poet/psychotherapist living in NYC. She is the author of the chapbooks ANOTHER LIFE (Counterpath, 2016), Para Ana (Inpatient, 2019), Air Sign (Creative Writing Department, 2024) and HYSTERICAL PREGNANCY (above/ground press, 2024). Fecund, her first full-length book, is currently available for preorder through the Michigan based press, Keith LLC.