Trebuchet
He’s sitting on the edge of his bed.
Still dreaming.
Tossing love letters she never wrote into a fireplace that isn’t there.
He’s screaming at his closet for keeping
secrets that he found inside a duffle bag
she forgot to take when she decided
it was time to peel back the veneer
and build a trebuchet out of the remnants.
He can still feel the eruptions inside his chest.
Again, and again.
Scattering embers of still volatile sorrow, lament, and melancholy.
By morning he will be sewn into the floor.
Too exasperated to move. Too disheveled to rise up,
and attempt any sort of remedy.
He won't take his pills.
He won’t greet the Sun.
He won’t eat or leave his room.
He’ll just stare into the closet, on the floor.
Wishing he had never dug up the bones stuck in his throat.
Wishing he could sleep without going to war.
-James Kelley 2018
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