It’s not that I ever got over my fear of death.
I just became too busy to remember.
In that way also I avoided an intimacy with strangers
which was really all I wanted.

I had studied the plastic breastplate
and the plastic sword I’d begged for as a child,
made them stronger with a collection
of daily insults. The imagined ones were best.

I erased the memories of fear and pain,
then erased the erasures. I bleached
the unsoiled linens, forgave the forgiven,
skirted the camouflage cover of moss and sticks

I’d built above the vertiginous void
which was my origin and my salvation.
And in the order of my ink and clips and paper
announced my arrival at my arctic bliss.

Categories: The Grind
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