street sweeper

i park my car in a cloud & it still manages
to get a ticket. i'm afraid of how 
they tell stories without us. the phrase
"voiceless" is a speech act. it does not admit
that the voice was taken & put through
a paper shredder. the shreds used as bedding. 
i have been a pig in another life.
i wrote poetry & shared it with the others.
we plotted ways to take over the government
but then we died. they sensor death
on the internet these days. people say,
"unalive" as if death were an erasing instead
of a return. i was sitting & eating lucky charms 
last night & thinking about how one day
all the buzzing in my head will be nothing.
i don't know how to make sense of death other than
to watch the street sweeper go by & panic,
wondering if i remembered to move my car.
if this life were a quilt, it would be complete
with crisscrossing squares & a big tear 
through the middle. i tell my partner for
the third time this year that i am going to
dig out the sewing machine & get started.
i'm going to make a dress & sleep inside it.
everyone is always "just doing their job"
as if we don't all wake up & sleep longer 
than we're supposed to & steal moments 
in bathroom stalls craving rest. the street sweeper
puts on a dirty ball cap & sunglasses.
decides to clean the asphalt. the leaves are falling.
the road is clean. my car has a boot on it.
a parking meter blooms where there didn't
used to be one. i don't ever want to just do
me job. i want to wake up & scream with
the cicadas until we are both speaking
the same language. when i die i will only
be gone for seventeen years, just like them.