stair climber machine

i used to pry the dark wide.
cut headlight holes in the morning.
a handful of grapes
& the mineola neon planet fitness. 
my car had no lungs & neither did 
the sky. parking lot sea gulls cast lots
for our engines. there were all kinds of hunger
in that place. purple purple purple. 
most people train & get stronger.
instead, i witnessed my body falling apart.
started off with the treadmills & moved 
to the elliptical. my knees like jam jar lids.
broken glass in between toes. 
i break easy which is to say i seldom 
have skin & sometimes have bones.
i have always been taught a body
is not something to be trusted & so
the machines hummed. pressed me
beneath their tongues. there were two
stair climbers at the end of the line. 
how strange a device built
to dangle heaven at a distance.
reaching & reaching. then too, the roads
of the treadmills, ghost town beneath
our feet. some of the fancy new machines
even showed a fake little town on the screen
you could pretend to run through.
once i got angry at my ankles. everything hurt.
i wanted a body that would take 
all my anger. instead, i have one
that buckles. turns into a bedsheet. 
tears open. i would not give in though.
i came & went right to the stair climber.
decided i was going to reach the top
of some unknown building. look out
at a glass circus & dance. i did not make it long
before my body told me,
"you are not climbing at all."
spent the next half hour in a massage chair
in the dark room no one ever used at the gym.
the fake leather was slick from 
other people's sweat or maybe cleaning fluid
or maybe both. i closed my eyes.
tried to hide my limp as i left. in the car
i watched the orange sun rise like 
a communion wafer leaving a mouth. 
my body too, not surrounding me
but deep within me, fucked knees & all.