Kill Switch

Now as a penalty for my skill, by night, I walk in the dead center of my act. If Judas go forth, providing his gifts for the altar, I come with words but no language, giving back all my nine slippery lives. There’s a switch that if you flip can show you more than you ask. Hearing the gruff knocking at the door. Lest out of spite just to come out into the light where God has gone. My brother enters my room. He draws the curtain. “You should get up. Get some air.”  I drag my eyes. Brutal stare at the glare of the day. He hangs over me, crossing into dreams that endow me. “Life is two choices, you know. You can stand roped in the ring. Or you can start to swing.” He lifts me from the bed, through hoops of hazardous half-moons, cyphers from bad oblivion, this plum pool where empires sit smug in my hand. Here becomes there without ceasing to be. He runs the water cold. Cold. How cold it got — silk gown against my skin deepening the chill. But I am not scared, ever, of this gangway that mangles the glee of gods. Let this gaudy miracle happen to me, come out to me like a blistered animal and sink your teeth keen into each brave limb. Head back to heaven, eyes closed, I cry out to a band of angels, fraying at their flawless seams, singing in retrograde symphony: “I beg, I beg, I beg.”