I carry this world on my shoulders
‘You can’t save the world.’ Says a voice in my ear.
I hold it in the hollow of my skull, smooth as a pebble worn by the babbling brook
Each syllable I have worn down
I have turned them till each edge is smoothed, childproof.
I know the words. I hear the words. I know what they mean.
but I don’t grasp them, quite.

I live under
where all sounds are shorn and clipped
dulled, distant.
Yet, clearly, I can hear my own eyes with each blink
clinking like coins.
Neon light spills over my dirigible head, reflecting back from the slick wet pavement
beaming up to my twin coins
splitting my head into that ache I always carry.

The rain is cascading down like a waterfall.
Extreme weather events
Say that to someone
They don’t say much; they might even shrug their shoulders.
‘Don’t look up!’ I tell them.
They always look up.

They see nothing. They hear nothing. They look back at their screens.

I see it in the eyes of the wild
bewilderment.
I am too.
And each time I see that their freedom isn’t all that
that we each suffer in our own alien way

My head expands with a whimper
We expanded ourselves with the clang of hammers and tongues.
We clash, we break, we fix, we mend.
Stick a plaster over the gas leak from my dirigible head.

But what if not all things can be rooted
held secure, anchored, fixed?

I have seen girls with spiral eyes, staircases up to the light’ouse
Seen boys with ‘em too.
Irises gleaming white against bloodshot kintsugi porcelain plates
the white lotus pearl of electrical snow bleeding into all of us eyes
Lost in the splizer zeeth watching white noise in a tubers teeth!

Politicians smiling on TV with teeth for the radio
Roadkill badgers zipped past burred windows
a nation of nature lovers

and Tom foolery knows as much as fuck knows; ask him, he’ll tell ya.
You can’t save everyone

 and it kills me.
Every. Damn. Time.