countdown

count me to zero o rocketship.
take my portrait in a burst of skin.
the first year of the pandemic
i took so many images of myself.
i would carve rooms into the walls of the apartment
with my lonely paring knife.
a dying room & a television room
& a room for all the "what-ifs." what if 
you & i were still the versions of ourselves
before all of this? what if we never reached zero
& instead held our breath & turned into 
cue balls? i have been smacked 
with the broom. i have been led out
like a meat cow into a quick machine. 
there is never enough time to pose.
the timer on the phone says,
"i am your lover now." i played
with light. the lamps crowding to get
a piece of my face. the apartment had
only three windows & all of them gorged themselves 
on the shadows of the mountain. 
still once in a while the rooms could glow.
paint my skin alive. i didn't like
to smile. a mouth wound. 
i would wake sometimes to find it
scabbed over. the week i spent
without speaking aloud to another human.
i told the dogs, "when this is over
i am going to be a drag queen." 
they did not crush my dreams. i painted
my face only late at night.
walked around in clown skin. the ceiling
full of altars. there is never enough time
to make your face what you want it to be
in the seconds before capture
but that did not stop me from trying. 
"please," i would beg.
"give me something to look at 
when i don't think i am real." 
if anything, this was a gathering 
of evidence to the contrary.