One with the clouds, the sun,
inhaling, soaking in freedom,
launching into the space I’d discovered first,
soaring as one with the enchanted carpet
whose global positioning system flew us—as one—
smack into the cuckoo’s nest.  

Lost my oneness, surrounded by all of them,
those who hadn’t  felt the sun in months,
didn’t remember what it felt like on their skin.
I acquiesced to showers without razors,
doors without locks, shoes without laces.  

Days were Dali’s clocks oozing into weeks
as the rays beat down, stiffening up as the leaves fell,
seizing me in their grasp, dangling my dreams
on a stick before my eyes, genetically modified,
drug-enhanced carrots that taunted me
behind my eyelids as I nightmared
from sundown ‘til dawn.  

The classic mistake: scribing it neatly
onto a card labeled unpleasant and shelving it
in my mental library: past. Keeping it smothered
beneath ridges and valleys of torn, bruised skin
lets it smolder in the veins, consuming budding
notions of self-worth before chance permits them
to blossom into the brain. 

My sense of mono is blurred, ripped,
divided into bi, stretched from pole to pole
standing at each end of twenty-seven years
of late nights and later mornings,
pillowcases drenched slick with tears and dreams,
fingernails shredded and torn off at the quick,
holes punched in weak drywall,
laughter resonating from my core
filling a gulf words can’t seem to span.