voice memo

i left a voice memo for myself when i was high

but when i listened later it was too windy to hear

i wonder if it told me where i was waking up

i broke my toe on a hardwood step

and slept in a bed that smelled like chicken straw

when i woke up everyone i knew was gone

and i want to make myself some eggs

there were jars of things like onions and eyes

between the saucepans and the spices

i thought about what that voice memo might

have said and left them to their fermented

devices the eggs leapt out of the cast iron pan

and hatched themselves a voice they said

your family lived here but they’re all dead

so what the hell are you gonna do?

i gave up on eating and went outside

i picked up an iron axe

i cut down every apple tree ten miles around

ben when i looked up they’d all grown back

there was appley flesh and appley bones

left littered all ‘round the mountain

i took them and mashed them and brought them home

and made apple pie at ten pm

then someone came in it was a voice not a man

i asked what she was gonna do

she took all the apples and all of the eggs

and told me anything but listen to you

i said to no one really cuz she had left

but what am i doin here? aunt vicki used

to make beer and bread on this farm

but she hasn’t come round in years hell

then the eyes in the jars on the walls they said

go find the jar with the ears and maybe

tonight when you’re dead and gone you can

listen to all those things you shouldn’t hear

—October 2021, Stanford, CA