silver lining 

i open my disco ball mouth
in the rain-slick dark. the goats are hungry
& there is a felled tree to cannibal. 
i listen to a tiktok where the speaker asks,
"why are there no pronouns for the trees?"
the tree is not a tree but a man who lies
face down in the muck leaves.
i used to be good at finding positives
but i have since gone glass-half-empty.
actually, the glass just doesn't seem
to exist anymore. i am not sure it was ever there.
i have socks to catch the water. i boil
my teeth to make necklaces out of them.
it is thanksgiving & i used to watch 
the macy's day parade but now i am watching
a fire eat a man or is that tree? 
i sometimes cut off a limb (my own)
in the hopes that there is something
shiny & precious beneath it. 
the phrase "silver lining" comes from
a john milton poem. every time i speak it
i am casting a fishing line into 
the language river & pulling up a goat.
salmon rush past towards a glass-half-empty. 
my desires have always had to swim upstream.
sometimes my partner tells me 
how to do everyday tasks as if 
i've never done them before. the silver lining
is that i get to clock out of my face
& think about deer. when i come back,
no one else is awake. no one else is home.
the trees are eating the door. i mean the goats.
the door is a man. the trees do not use pronouns,
instead they should only be referred to 
if you are within arm's length of them.
this is how i want to be known. a hand
on my back every time someone speaks of me.