.once.upon.a.time.
in an advanced civilization
factories mass-produce
mechanical prosthetics
to aid workers in navigating
an inhospitable labor apparatus.
no one with fewer than three
arms can hold a job. there
are arm-jackers everywhere
& who could blame them.
the weather keeps getting worse.
each factory runs right up until
the weather halts it. sometimes
the people are the weather.
before long the world floods.
the prosthetics short-circuit
& detach & tide away. only then
do the workers re-member
all along they’ve been fish.
.in.the.bar.parking.lot.after.last.call.
—for e.
we looked up & wondered
about the swirling stars & how
pronouncing the word invents
even more of them—stars—
while i finished my fifth g&t.
you don’t drink because—
you didn’t say, but once
i googled you & found
the notion of your guilt
compounding mine.
later, when i told you i hadn’t wept
in years, you’d remind me of that night
i was drunk. once,
because we both grew up
at bible camps, you asked
my favorite praise song
& i didn’t say, the one
you sang into the black
hole of my memory.
robin herold (she/it) is a bewitched songbird trained in creative writing & small group facilitation (Arizona State University MFA 2020). She is a queer, trans, autistic, mad songwriter-poet, a disordered organizer, & a white settler in New York’s Hudson River Valley—unceded Lenapehoking, contemporary & ancestral homeland of the Munsee Lenape & Esopus people. robin’s music, writing, & other offerings are freely available at patreon.com/robinherold.