If some clean-room elevator connected floors are

Getting treated like a meat market anyhow,

Then why shouldn’t this old steam engine bellwether

Deserve to be on retainer and on premises?

But, son, I was not lying when I said I’d do anything to protect you.
Anything to keep you safe.
Sometimes that meant watching you put yourself in harm’s way.
Life is pointless without risk.
Sometimes it meant watching you get your heart broken
or hearing your bones break from the bleacher seats on the sidelines.
Harm and hurt, you see, are unfortunately, required of us.
The Universe demands it.
They are two of the many ways we learn and become stronger, better people.
Or so I always tried to be better
and I hope that I instilled that desire in you.

There were splinters in our hearts the size of floorboards.

We waited, shivering.

I feel better at home, though when I go into the kitchen the staff have turned into simian creatures. Not quite human, not quite monkey. Something gleefully in between, well-dressed as ever.

on the corner
of Casino Center and Colorado with the studded thongs and the leashes around their slim necks and those high- waisted hot-pants hiked up to that sinched waist terrified by the possibility of beauty, while forgetting what
it might
be
...slowly
losing
life

I built a city in the desert.
Lithium and plastic and dry cellulose.
Autonomous flying cars.
Drone-delivered impossible everything,
Nourishing our body-positive bodies.
Streaming, bingeable Obama-produced documentaries
In every remote classroom.

There was even a monorail.

This is better than the last testament to her will, which has been reduced to a manuscript hidden in a rare and rusting trunk. Frothing and varnished, it waits.

Dark Gravel

Flattened Cardboard Burger Boxes

Used Bandaids

Slabs of Tire Rubber

Splintered Toothpicks

Exploded Ketchup Packets