against the odds

i am a pilot. i am making enough money
to eat quinces & wait for them to be ripe. 
i am a flower girl despite my gender
& despite there not being a wedding. i am 
a traveling salesperson without anything
in my bag to sell. i am sick of numbers
& their insistence on truth. i want to be extraordinary.
i want to be rich but in the fantasy way 
that doesn't involve exploiting people. 
the exception to the fire school. i do not want
to be the statistic girl or maybe i do. 
i love being several petals of survivor not because
of the violence but what i have done with it. 
you can run from the machine. you can build
a language that rejects it but you will still
have a little serial number just like a backpack. 
the number is older than even your gender.
a little matrix said, "this one will be degenerate 
& we will make everything harder than it needs to be."
i want to be your glossy statistic. big depression
& big anxiety & even bigger things i can't 
type on the internet without the words imploding. 
we begin to talk through omissions. 
afterall though, what is an "other" but the naming
of an absence. i am retiring early. i am fishing
on an afternoon with no hook or bait & no one hurts me. 
i spend a whole year without anyone 
following me home. i weep when i mistake a tree
for a man with knife. danger is so vast. there is 
the threat & then all the ways that threat
branches out to become wild. i am a sweet dragon.
i grow a banana tree in the middle of the living room
& despite all the odds, it bears fruit.