Jenna Ribbing
I. I have this cowboy in my sights. He sold his bitcoin for those new boots. My skin, thin as sorry robin’s eggs. Much too dependent for this kind of thing. I’d like to think, pretty in his hands. Maybe pretty enough to eclipse the fatal fragile.
II. Wolves with killing luck in their pockets, prowling around out there, taking chances because they’ll never have chances to lose. The luck to find you once, that luck, I say, while closing all the curtains, because I don’t have to see you right now. Who am I trying to convince? That’s how he remembered it so that’s how it happened.
III. So much love there, vanity love. Drifts like clouds in the corpus blue. I conceive myself a propeller, mechanically propagating a world that empties itself of its occupants. A world that throws all his stuff straight through the front door.
IV. Knowing right from wrong does not preclude choosing wrong. The knowing only makes the wrong that much more appealing. What you’re seeing is just stupidity. They haven’t learned any better. But they seem so happy. I’ll still be standing here, thinking critically, fermenting rapier memories of negative outcomes, calling optimism a lack of reasoning. He must be wedged tight somewhere, must be stuck somewhere in all that plaque.
V. We get so busy trying to track down a pit deep enough for all this exhaustive meaning. Haven’t you stopped to consider what it would take to crawl back out of that? We might not want to stay down there. I might not want to stay down there with him. He might not want to stay down there with me. Might nots, a giant garbage pile.
VI. He lives by virtue of finding things out he does not want to know. I surmise he will die by virtue of knowing things he did not want to find out. From here to there is quite a peak-valley conversation. Let’s hope he keeps it riveting.
VII. He assigns interventionary metrics. Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes or I’m coming in there. Fifteen minutes or…Fifteen minutes or…I better be dead if it ever gets past that. Please let me be dead if it ever gets past that.
VIII. Dumpsters, matches. Someone complete the metaphor, would ya.
IX. I need to close my eyes and think of the empty room. Think of the empty room. Think of the empty room. Think of the empty room, three times and it’s empty room magic.
X. There are fears that will become anesthetized resignations, and then there are fears that will eternally make your insides shriek and mind combust. Cross your heart. Say your prayers. May I remain hoisted on his bony shoulders — the rough six feet of sodium chloride between me and a jagged rock bottom.