Now I’ve forgotten how to keep my cool
when everyone in the cafeteria is
cracking their hard-boiled eggs with the blunt of their knife.
I try to love everything in my head,
including those moments that become
only hazy thumbnails caught under fingernails.
They erode back throat and mouth grooves and I am
standing
at the back of the bathroom
and the front of my mind
so that in the mirror’s concavity
I am flipped.
I am so seamless,
and as close to it as kiss-cam operators
when pink lighting lungs breathe smileys
and names onto glass.
It is so natural not to notice.
I left myself there,
finger waiting in the ice to carve us all in
but melting, instead, into fleeting heat
and shards of calcium.
I forget that I keep my cool
in the tiny coin pocket at the front of my jeans.
Featured artwork courtesy of author.
