the unbroken; the door crack by Miguel Rodríguez Otero

the unbroken

i wake up to a haze of automatic thoughts

i drop a little jazz on my player

suit up in my best shirt

and check my cell phone one more time

but still

early-morning silence falls in like bookends

in the middle of which is nothing

just a void i have to learn to inhabit

i am stranded at these places

you speak to me about

you say i am made of things i have thrown away

and that i bear a spell which is hard to escape

so i call you up as i order coffee

i hit your voicemail

says something about a rainy morning

that i don’t understand

three twenty is my change

and yet i am all those places

you have discarded in me

the blueprint i drew

the ocean i never crossed

and yes

i am the void too

i am deeply rooted

in the broken parts of me

so may i just say i lay down my efforts

to get rid of this curse

or to come to terms with it

your voicemail records all these things

i should probably not have said

i gently let myself fall

into the void

pick up my coffee

and swim

the door crack

i watch you choose a dress

through the door crack in the bathroom

stock up on eyeliner

i am hiding in the trench

i dug up last night

some days i swim miles in the bathtub

till i am washed ashore

with the flotsam and the anger

unnoticed to myself

in the wreckage

but i am tired of dying

so i launch a lifeboat

through this tiny crack

a little conversation at open sea

i let go of anger and flotsam

and cling to these words

i have assembled

a paper boat i fold

to try to keep us afloat

amidst the debris

we have capsized before

in other oceans

been cast away

we don’t have to die again

i trust we will spot land

we are too tired to even care

about heaven