The seagull
on the parking lot fence:
laughing, angry, or neither;
commenting on your face,
stature, speech; or worse
on none of that; on
something unseen in the air
around you. As if
air around you is the problem;
as if you are the air’s problem.
You feel you’re suddenly
an exposed shipwreck:
treated as a mockery
not a tragedy;
opened to scrutiny
by the scouring
of a storm; the seagull,
laughing over
your once waterlogged bones,
knows more than you want to
acknowledge, is
threatening to tell,
is perching on you,
refusing to leave.
January 31, 2023
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