the box

when you say something to me

i hear it echo off the air

find its way inside the box

around me and get lost in there

in your bed last week

naked from the waist down

we hit your dmt pen

and when i looked around

i felt myself in a box of black

thicker than air too bruised

for oxygen to get through

too far away inside to hear you

you touched my body

you said my name you said

how fate brought you to me

i thought i wish i was dead

i couldn’t move i couldn’t see

i breathed out all the air

that was left inside of me

and more and then i held it there

and that’s how it feels now

hearing you hear me

like watching from some spacy

opera box not really being

not really seeing not really

my voice not really my words

you far outside the box somewhere

and me all alone in here, unheard

—September 2021, Stanford, CA