It feels, always,
like inside me
there’s a documentary
about vanilla
playing on repeat: sometimes
it’s at full volume;
at other times
it’s barely audible
under my head chatter;
but it’s always on. There’s
a episode where
a man in a monocle
purchases an escalator
that no one else gets to ride.
There’s the one with
a princess who gestures
from the top for me to come to her,
but I never get there.
There is that one where
I see myself riding a unicycle
up a long hill.
I’m sure
I have never ridden one before
but somehow in this film
I’m straining and
making slow progress.
I begin to wonder when
this was filmed, is it the reason
I’m such pain here and now?
A spokesman comes on,
a voice over extolling
the wonders of vanilla.
A documentary voice
that makes a compelling
case for the dry factual,
the obviously correct
flavor of vanilla. It doesn’t matter
how hard I drive the sticks
into my ears, how much I bleed,
how hard I squeeze the throat
of the man with the monocle
or cry out my rejection
of the princess; my skin
is caught in the escalator.
I am bleeding;
dragged along, the scent of
vanilla deep in my nostrils,
voiceover yelling my name.