by Gabby Mijalski-Fahim

I asked the maintenance guy if he could hear the hum in my room

to which he suggested

 

            Our sound frequencies differ

            meaning

            This noise will follow you like the moon stalks a car.

 

I paid a psychiatrist for a clue to which she prescribed two hundred and twenty milligrams of pharmaceuticals dressed as new beginnings. I said

 

            I refuse to believe that grease does not leak

            from my head and rot the wall when I sleep

 

            or that my friends don’t search for a switch

            on my torso each time they embrace me

 

            or that my words cannot cause wildfires from the matchstick

            I call an uvula who teases a tongue that mistakes every sip of cider

            for the evanescence of teenage love

 

When did she begin confusing family reunions for interrogations,

fingers for fishing lines

dangling sharp hooks with seductive colors.