There’s a stain on my comforter from an old 2 am nosebleed.
The blotch of rusted red embedded into a gentle gray
is illuminated by the hand painted mason jar of fairy lights
I bought at the antique wooden boat show.

My speaker glitches on my bookshelf as clementine continues to play on loop
and I begin to breathe in time with the beat of synthetically submerged piano keys.
My ribs are constrained in my self-made bindings
and my lungs are latticed with spiderweb bruises and fragmented fractals.

I am struck with the reality that nothing I create is truly my own.

And I feel this the way you feel for a lost piece of a Halloween costume-
discarded on the sidewalk, buried in the half-shoveled snow.

I took a scorching shower at 6 pm instead of handing out candy in my Spider-Man suit.