Dream Chaser

I asked them for cigarettes and they gave them to me,
striking the lighter until the fuel ran out,
whole packs burning, hanging out of my mouth.

I wanted to be beautiful. When I was younger
I put on a dress and searched for my light
and then waited in it.

Someone put in a book in my hand, took a step back and called me Dream Chaser.
I wasn’t moving in the grass with smoke in my lungs like aluminum in ant hills.
It got hard to breathe.

I grew hungry for the dark. Outside my clearing were apartments full of photographs
of all the people I would never be, each with a title
floating in the crisp, languid air.

I asked them for health and they tried folding me into
some other body, smacked my back
but the metal wouldn’t surface. The things I’d already done
would not leave me.

My head and hands grew
but the rest of me stayed the same.

It’s cold out here and now I’m filling my intestines
with molten, carbonated, amber-colored glass.
When I take a step away I will forgive it.
I could not forgive a plastic picture frame.