The name I choose to give to the pit in my stomach

Stage it in a forest

Place it in the barks, and the saps, and the folded twining limbs, scooping at the fog

stage it in a forest under a thrown blanket spent of 

leaves

and soot

ashes and poplars, willows, weeping willows dry whips

The papers peeling from the backs of the basket trees

Birches and pines

Mine is this song, steeped deep black

For days, sullen

Soots in meadows and warm compost

Bury, burying my feet into dark earth

dominant

But terrified

String in some sun

pulled through a sheet like cross stitch

pinpoints and pricks of light leaking through the gaps of the leaves yet 

to fall

Into my eyes

so

i squint

Bring me back there

I am cold and rub my hands to my biceps

Rub my hands down the elbows

Rub my hands on the front of my jeans and I shiver

I am transformed

Back into a little boy

as I walk home from school and see my first fall and my smile lights up

And I still smiled so my teeth shone

And I was happy

And I took the bus, and I rode in those old plastic seats and peered over the edges, through the windows, through the alleys

bicycle paths

birds

singing songs, sitting next to my sister

And we were still untouched

Stage it in a forest, alone

My body deep deep in the frozen earth

As the cool trickle of a handful of the stuff

Pours onto my right shoulder, right below the collarbone

And fills that gap, seven seven seven

Handfuls of the stuff and now my arm won't move.

I look across, up, down. Searching for landmarks and there are none

I am now stung

And it burns little coals in my eyes

Hot little cloth wrapped tight and put in those dark holes

Cheese cloth marred sienna brown small, rooted in those pits

Sit down

Sit down

And my head begins to spin and I lay down and the crackle

cradles my head and 

I stare into the light gray and fall asleep