a poem in which you are not playing

by BEE LB

Compagnons/Unsplash

here is the key to your crossword, scrabble loss, word search, mad lib: priority, badly, unimportant, work, insignificant, apologize, better

it’s best in the viewfinder but if it has to be one or the other choose the future always, over the past. the shutter-click sepia-haze isn’t a choice, but what really is

here is the key to your numbers game: 29 years, 3 months, 13 days 5 years, 9 months, 16 days 6 months, 27 days

you get no hints, i didn’t think you’d need them. we have seconds and minutes and hours and days we have endless time and hands to grab it

here is the key to your paint-by-number: 1 little boy blu, 2 yellow raincoat, 3 romance how long before you realize the brushes aren’t here, we’ve been playing house this whole time

i swallow my words and your floodlights shutter, i catch on your exposed nail, there’s soot in your chimney if you’re not careful you’ll choke your doorway is too narrow for us both to fit through

here is the key to hide and go seek: first you have to count, then you have to try to find me, you have to seek my body out with yours, you have to reach for where i’m hiding

i wake to an absence i don’t know how to grow into. everything i want is trapped behind glass. i make sweeping statements to distract from my lack before i find an end

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BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; a writer creating delicate connections. they have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall in Michigan. they have been published in FOLIO, Figure 1, The Offing, and Harpur Palate, among others. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co and their workshops can be found at poetryasplay.carrd.co