(image by Juliette Clovis)

Buried / Inside these red walls striped with black and white pages and a chattering keypad recording an imaginative life / crammed between slug lines, dialogue and thirty-second pitches

Charmed / by the simplicity of a lazy Saturday with friends by the pool shooting hoops / double dosing on prayer and love / pouring from cups of hope and life everlasting / beyond stage four cancer threatening to shatter our fairytale

Zooted / from infused cranberry muffins and chai tea and the never-ending yellow brick road / wondering if the tin man got high / if Dorothy was really a meth head or if the lion was just gay

Chock-full / of deferred hope and preferred depression / filled to the brim with overnight success Oscar rehearsal speeches / of friends with benefits / of conflict diamond shards peppered into my shampoo to make me feel alive

this room inside my head is where zebras are unleashed and run wild / where I rock/paper/scissors with Quentin Tarantino / where I play hopscotch with the spirit of Maya Angelou/ where I sing the blues with Billie Holiday / write prose with Miles  / downward dog pose with Moses

this room must be purgatory

hey God, leave me be / my wings work just fine