How to Destroy Everything and Still Feel Good About Yourself.

Gather sage from behind the farmhouse in your imagination, 

the one you go to when you're daydreaming

about having enough money.

Bring the water to a frolicking boil, 

like your best friend on a bad night 

turned raging drunk.

Pour it out into the soil in the garden, 

blank dark brown like an open sore.

Nothing seems to be growing. But

Nothing is still something, right?

Chuckle to yourself at your own cleverness.

Next, take two memories of kindness 

and one of the soft, too-intimate touch 

of a stranger's skin

and fuck them at three hundred degrees 

until the eyeholes are golden crisp.

Glance twice at a police officer 

kneeling on top of a figure in the distance.

Keep driving.

Don't answer when your neighbor

knocks on your door

looking for someone, 

anyone.

Protect your heart 

always

like a tiny glass ornament

wrapped in tissue paper

Until you are nothing else.