Try

Try freeing the weight of yourself
from a meat hook, is how it feels
today. I ask the gods (demoted to
plural, lowercase g) why they
ever allowed me uncomplications,
lightness of being, carbohydrates.

There are not enough pails to hold
the saltwater. One perfect day in
a country across the sea, and the
gods smile and wait at home for me,
poised with their odd tools, sharp
sticks. There is no going back to
happiness. No one can convince
me otherwise. They were right to
worry over that apple, and where
to hide the core.

Somewhere there is a woman who
is clever, who is living her grief
backwards, shedding it layer by
layer. Once a miserable child of
shocking misfortune, she will die
happily of happiness at 90, face
split open from too much smiling.

I don’t know where to go, where
to hide my own swollen face, not
the face of a clever mortal. The gods
jab me good, hard, with their sticks
until I agree to clad myself in each
heavy new layer of losing.

I don’t want this. I don’t want this.
I want new gods and new words
and new eyes and new ears and
new flesh to remember nothing
that came before. I carefully wash
the torn flesh that wants to scar
over, wants to be done with itself,
wants to come together again.