bullet in binary by catherine lockmiller

What if your brain is a shell

And you an emptied bullet

And your mind a gap


What if you scattered present with past with

What comes may come won’t become because a blast


Blew apart the calendar, every time and hour and all your


Boiling,

oozing,

bursting

thoughts.


What if the bang of the gunshot

Was not enough


and the ring

Of your nerves was all you heard.


What if your veins shivered

In the skein of your want for undoing.

What if they clung to the blood

And the bone


and the weight wouldn’t let go.


What if you were alive

And unsheathed

and your skin

Never came open never unopened

Not letting the bullet break out nor letting air rush in.


What if what you almost did

Splattered what you are and were into a single

Wound that never almost emerged


What if it stuck

And you were shot in the mid-unstruck

Waiting for a hole for clarity for the light-breach-sound-span-galaxy-abyss.

What if you scattered present with past with

What comes may come won’t become because a blast

Blew apart the calendar, every time and hour and all your

Boiling,

oozing,

bursting

thoughts.

What if the bang of the gunshot

Was not enough

and the ring

Of your nerves was all you heard.

What if your veins shivered

In the skein of your want for undoing.

What if they clung to the blood

And the bone

and the weight wouldn’t let go.

What if you were alive

And unsheathed

and your skin

Never came open never unopened

Not letting the bullet break out nor letting air rush in.

What if what you almost did

Splattered what you are and were into a single

Wound that never almost emerged

What if it stuck

And you were shot in the mid-unstruck

Waiting for a hole for clarity for the light-breach-sound-span-galaxy-abyss.