real human and everyone else

into the lake at Girl Scout camp with all those shrieking girls
slipped ghostly into person sitting there with the hypnotist
like a Russian hunchback at the junior high dances, me pointing
at the lion on the wall, his cool yellow eyes, and listened to
passing cars, the rustle of leaves

remembered what it feels like to climb the stairs of New York City
so the adult me stepped into my own history saying, “you didn’t”
and my dad would walk along mulling like running water, like
seemed like a tiny stewardess on the verge of a nervous breakdown
you had arranged for this life

hands were still in fists and her face was full of humiliated catatonia
to keep my having read it a secret wavered away and came to the end
of copper oak leaves and acorns into the hands of the oldest person
who would sit at their table like graven images and ruin everything
in a dreadful smelting accident

thin needles underneath the top layer of fingertip skin were stitched
army greens, black greens, lime greens, heathery greens, and red
came to feel just the opposite depression secretly believed around
that people were insensitive shitheads and you were really broke
like that, I heard it with my own ears.