One moment please

you will be connected

presented with

an array of choices

you don’t want to make

press option one

and another

voice, canned and empty.

Option two offers

what looks to you

–from your living room couch

your cats clamoring

all over you–

like something you don’t want

could never have. Your fingers

tap at little buttons on the screen fat

and heavy, you remain

invisible, unseen.

The places that scare you

are unannounced

the usual array

of options

the dark corner

of an alley

a party

filled with happy glittery

people in red dresses

with sequins, tight

bodies, going somewhere

you will never be.

Have someone else                                                                                                                            cut it, scissors sharp, razor ready,

who knows what will happen, how it will turn out

what you will look like far into the future,

where will you be.

My dreams

are snippets, fragments

of sound.

My brother envelops me

and stays, his arms

heavy on my shoulders.

My mother, lost

in a car sits

in front of my house

in her bathrobe. In the morning

we meet at my father’s grave, my mother and I

abandon my brother walking down

the wide road which curves around

and goes nowhere.