The list expanding on its own

A girl head back and wheeling under the starlight that starts to look like fluorescent bars.

She is tired of wondering, waiting, she would rather be swimming, stealing.

When they talk to her, are they the soft-gentle-dangerous of a parent speaking to a toddler?

How can she be sure that the law of gravity still applies?

The clock is moving backwards now, its traitor hands envisioning a world where she is not.

She breathes deep: diaphragm, shoulders lifting, playing the counting games that Nancy taught.

They are speaking still, but the words slide, sideways, grazing against her ears and making no impact.

Milk is on the grocery list three separate times, the grocery list is scrawled into her inner thighs, where no one else can help her read it.

There are church bells, somewhere, not here, but still she can hear them.

Her ears ring, she thinks angels are probably silent, and that’s why the men in the Bible were so afraid while the women took peace, took strength, took harmony.

The shower is a bodily horror, ten thousand pinpricks on skin that sloughs off too easily.

How can she be sure that the law of gravity still applies?

White men in white coats who want her to five things she can see, four things she can hear, but

When she says what she sees, what she hears, they shake their heads, goats in the field, bearded in distrust and illness.

She smells the swisher sweets Marshawn used to smoke, she wonders what his afterlife smells like.

Gravity must apply, because the feeling ebbs, the tears still fall straight down.

Who is touching me? She screams. Lightning behind her eyes, thunder between her ribs. More awake than alive.