and who brought you into this, silly moon? craters licked across your judgemental glare. i know you watch me in horror through the small window of your fingers, my heavy swerving as i write this ode to you. yes! indeed from my frail car, spittling up US 23 at 10:15pm on an empty highway. i guess what i am trying to say is, i must travel towards the poem. must be why i write so many love letters for you while drifting carelessly from line to line in this deathtrap vehicle. maybe, it is the space i have acquired by being alone on these road trips. maybe, it’s all of my alone that reminds me of you. your soft glowing baptism, every morning you dip your head beneath the ocean longer than any of us could survive, no wonder we’ve made you holy, we think of you as immortal. makes sense we dream of visiting you. maybe i, too, am stiff and drowning, i know so much of dying. maybe, i am finally headed to you and i have a litany of things i want to say. and i know this poem is just another way to say i am sad but i don’t know if i want to die, and driving is the closest thing i can offer myself to an obituary. i am my own greatest elegy, but you are always the victim. i am so sorry you must die in all of my poems so that i get a chance to live.
jason b. crawford (They/Them) was born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut full-length Year of the Unicorn Kidz is out from Sundress Publications.