Catastro – Holiday Dickens

June 6, 2025

Sitting on a green bench in a park,

I know that sometimes I want the world to 

end so badly.

 

Then the trails of muck on my mismatched 

socks,

 

tracking from room to room,

 

slipping under freshly cleaned covers:

 

Would be milled to dust with the 

dozen rabbit feet

 

I’ve strung along my bag’s leather 

handlebars (4luck) 

 

As the sun cracks through my skin,

 

worn thin from overusing Adapalene – 

 

a dawn at the end of the day,

a stark light evading my eyes potential contact.

 

My little heart whistles,

knowing the heat won’t be strong enough

to permeate every day to come.

 

 

 

Maybe I’m just tired of these near-heavens, 

like everyone else.

 

Tired of overindulging in almost-there 

scenes,

 

appearing from the place where I first 

learned

 

to name things like Hope – 

Now reduced to endlessly scrolling upward

 

for a message sent to me a long time ago.

 

 

I’ve tried to block this power –

 

a power that makes me salivate

 

precisely because it takes my life away

 

from the music on cheap speakers

 

in a half-furnished place.

 

Yet it runs throughout me,

 

even when I can’t quite find it.

 

Infesting like a forgotten screenshot,

 

revealing the combination of sevens and 

fours

 

that once made up an Ex’s phone number.

 

 

 

 

In this end, I would be the last to know 

eternity –

 

Eternity as it has slobbered over

 

everything estranged,

 

that once provided us Feeling.

 

 

I stand beneath the setting sun

 

like a vulnerable, and shamefully horny old 

woman –

 

texting scammers on Scrabble Go

[WHISK ME AWAY]

 

because they pose as veterans

 

trapped in precarious economic situations.

 

While the world still has just enough left in it

 

for a bank transfer to reach their true 

homeland

 

by the Tuesday they claim to really need it.

 

A wounded German Shepherd passes me by –

 

his ribs wrapped in gauze,

 

his tongue hanging

 

like he was born yesterday.

 

 

 

Then a gunshot rings out, at that same time 

of day 

When the park is filled with children,

 

blissfully unaware

 

of what if

the blank wasn’t a blank –

 

but an infinite number of bullets,

 

finding their way under bruisable kneecaps,

 

straight through glittery scrunchies

 

holding their hair half-up.

 

Trying to locate the blast,                         (presumably from some nearby track)

 

I anchor myself to the blackened dot

 

in the center of a blue seashell

 

on my bedside table –

 

brought back from a Riviera

 

I couldn’t afford to go to.

 

 

The shell ridges bold enough to hold 

incense,

could commence that fantasy as a burial 

ground:

 

An amalgamation of all the prayers

 

I’ve filtered through smoke

 

and turned into wishes.

 

On this day,

 

if the world were truly to meet its end,

 

there would be no difference

 

between the things I’ve done

 

and the things I’ve thought of. 

 

If there were enough time to be warned,

 

an alarm loud enough for all of us to hear –

 

I’d find the floor where someone was

waiting for me.

 

 

And I wouldn’t have to slip down the stairs.

 

Because there’d be no reason to rush.

 

And the cellophane-covered staircase

 

would remain forever under construction.

 

Like the first want never given

 

Like a jar of holy dirt

 

swallowed in desperation by the terminally 

ill.

 

Like bubblegum snow cones sold by the lake

 

where the grass is littered with goose poop, 

the

 

hard pellets caught between your toes

 

Waiting patiently to be without a barrier 

So that all the memories restoring their thoughtlessness

Could be in a permanent past. 

 

When it is finally time to leave,

 

and wash myself clean,

 

I would find myself

 

on a street transformed

 

into an emergency altar floor,

 

surrounded by candles

 

that burn up like rockets –

 

leaving behind trails of never-before-seen bright white.

 

Then, I could finally touch

 

every moment I’d been asked:

 

“And what was your name?”

 

Unified with a previous stranger

 

as the sun burned
through 

every layer of SPF I’d ever slathered – 

 

straight to the bone.

 

And I know I could console myself

with the fact that:

 

 

I will be permanently grounded.