Pass it on, your burdened plate
Your yoke, your cross, whatever weight
over where I sit and wait
with leadened lids and veins like roots
I’ll take it if you let me
dislocate this python jaw and
swallow those barbed adjectives.
I’ll eat your insecurities
dry heave hope and reassurance
Smile away the gag reflex
and take my flight of stairs away
into the upper nights and
There let the splinters and shards
dissipate and circulate
from root to extremity
every vein, every ventricle.
I’ll sit in my shadowed corner
under the rippling drapes
and hope the measure of grace in me’s
enough to tip the scales
from poison back to peace
it ages me
a little bit
but if I can watch you be rid of it
you needn’t worry ’bout me.
or so goes the fantasy
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