heat lightning

between the lines of your letter there is the dark of an overpass,

there is a crowd flinching and covering its ears against a baby's cries,

and an eternal catholic guilt. i read and feel the rapture has come

and i was not chosen. i am the bottle after the wine's been drunk,

the castle after the royalty's been beheaded, a tandem bicycle

with no riders at all. this letter has been written before;

i am not the only person who has felt the world end in the mail,

but it feels like it.

when the world really ends they'll be laughing at me and dying.