Thank you, Frances.
Thank you, my dear friend, Matt.
This is called, "Dear Reader."
And it begins with the title.
"Dear reader, my nightmares are your confetti
so you may step over tiny skulls like a satrap
among unhousebroken whippets.
The sour diapers of morning give way
to the overripe plums of noon, give way to the designer
cheeses of evening.
Then night is no one's problem.
How tender it is with its murderers,
how consoling to its trillionaires
that lost space man music in the pines, god
opening his box of fishhooks.
Dear reader.
I thought I was prepared, but I'm never prepared.
But please, take this.
It is your lift ticket, your perfume that
lingers in the fire-fickled room long after you've
vamoosed and made that poor boy nursing his third cinnamon
daiquiri realize he missed his chance,
your bones already asterisks, your chipmunk glass a schwa."