When I say “the cow jumped over the moon”

I want you to visualize it.

I want you to see it in your minds eye,

to react appropriately,

to shake with the reverberations of ambiguity. 

Last time you told me you’d stay.

Last night you stroked the fireside with iron tongs

prodding whispers like promises undone—

prodding ash until smoke plumed

and choked us in the fog of exactitude. 

You were so calm then,

so composed until that hearth became a battleground

where flames danced amidst flurried shouts—

amidst conflicting sentiment—

amidst Tuesday night’s steak and onion dinner. 

“Why!” you shouted.

“Why must words snap at us like vipers; 

what merit does inconclusivity pose?”

You tore that room apart,

slashed it with needled fingers

until your ring glinted the fluorescent amber of resentment—

of tongues that, unbeknownst to us, had left their cozy dwelling.

When I said “get the f*ck out”

I wanted you to know that I meant it. 

I wanted you to know that the bucket had finally brimmed

and that I would be dousing those flames,

not with steadfast molecules of hydrogen and oxygen,

but the erraticism of a fire extinguisher. 

I wanted that smoke and contaminated powder to engulf you—

disorient you—

choke you in perpetual enigma. 

But then you were gone

and that fog turned, 

gnashing with the fervor of self-hatred—

gnashing with the glint of a mirror when you hold it to the sun,

but then realize that mirror is glass

and that light is shining through upon you

as you stand drenched in gasoline. 

I wish one could simply stifle that smoke, 

terminate those flames so that they may not harm once their use is exhausted. 

I wish fear and jealousy lay within a lighter, 

ready to arise and redact at the flick of a switch. 

I wish that conflict and rumination did not blaze in tandem

and that my brain could just shut off when I wanted it to.

Now the curtains are burning;

now the house is burning;

now the world writhes in suffocation.

And now that ground is black and scorched, calm until

the match drops 

upon a freshly kindled panorama.