peek a boo

can there be

life

after childhood

because in cat years

i’m already dead

24 and still stuck

on the early stuff

thinking i may have

peaked when i was eight

and on a hill with girls laughing at my

joke about farts

later gaggling about their anuses

as starfish

making me grow another limb

but always dying in blood

and deflation

because i’m nine and blowing balloons

now coke

now her

and out of breath

though she has holes of air

that smell like plastic

and i am ten and deemed

allergic to polymers or chemicals

or something

including my mom shaking my head

saying stay with me

stay with me son

and she says it too from the cave of some

allegory though its peaceful with the sun

bleeding only a little disaster through the blinds

her eyes dark her legs darker

wondering if she needed to say that

with her hairs like bugs

little caterpillars who decided

not to become butterflies

but die full and happy

and in their eleventh year

which i am in

aware of my body becoming

destroying itself

cocooning in sweat and pimples

and popping pills

that’ll make you feel good baby

real good

the good life

forgetful of all that stuff then baby

just this moment

with me

with us

with all

that left me when i was twelve

looking at my friend in the box

as a bad gift but he’s smiling

perhaps because

all the other planets are named after gods

and ours is only earth

dirt

digging dirt

where he’ll blossom

though they cut the grass here

where i am smoking it red and redder

and reddest

eyes of saturn of mars

of another place where i can’t

be reached

where i need not live

having already done enough of whatever it is

one is supposed to do

before they are done with whatever it is

they aren’t doing

which includes my homework when i am

thirteen and realizing summer is shorter each season

though the sky forgets this

in its giggling teeth widening at my burned skin

and beached sea

and burping self

from too much alcohol

wavy and crashing into the bank

the castle of my parent’s home

seeing the ocean for the first time

knowing it is salty

tasting its sweat and sun and fish shit

in my mouth from sushi

throwing up onto a vase of some relative

too forgetful to be named

in front of my loving caring cooing parents

who woke up like then

to still see that child

who doesn’t