CALL ME BELOVED

For the kneading claws on cat paws, like
ragged rakes reaching around your neck, for
your sweatshirt’s heavy hood cowl of armor –
for those speedbumps littering all the roads
just outside your apartment, close enough
together to jolt you from derealization, for
steering wheel steady under your fingertips,
no cause for alarm, for sleeping past the alarms –
for buying the second box of Mallomars, and
the hot chocolate, and the bag of marshmallows –

for that time you put down the knife,
decided to be disappointed, one more time
by a society that should have embraced you,
deciding that twenty years terrified was still
worth more than a gorey Irish goodbye, an
epilogue written across the tan tile of your
dormitory’s shower stalls – you hate phone calls
but you dialed campus security, anyway –
transmuted total terror into complete shame
when the bored uniform scolded you, some child
in the patrol car backseat interrupting his night –
for the way your stomach rolled right in time
with the nurse’s eyes on a cold infirmary table –
I suppose I didn’t cut deep enough for them –

for not cutting deep enough.
For the privilege to witness each horror
that has followed, decisions made daily
every lonely dawn – stilling the tremors,
putting down the knife, saying the words,
for desiring the disappointments, for
seeking out new cracks to fall through –
for buying the second box of Mallomars
and all of the battered hope that entails