existence

I put my hands tight over my ears
and chant a soothing reminder
(there's nothing there, there's nothing
to see, to smell, to hear)
but a smell of burnt straw housing
comes up around me with its companion,
the thickly gathering smoke
as my poorly made house of excuses
burns down, a fatality in the war
I declared on myself.

I press my hand tight against my mouth
to prevent myself from
(ever speaking again)
screaming out into the nothing that gathers
around the skeleton of my burning house
I do not want the answer to my question
my questions, my baby crows
that won't stop growing
and won't ever stop circling
looping around me, black wings sings
(all my questions singing)
so close to my head.

"What happens if you scream into the night
and the night screams back?"
one of my crows asks me.

I put my hands so tight over my ears
trying to make them melt into my flesh
wondering when finger bones
will start fusing with my skull
until they fusion is complete,
and there is no possible way
that I could ever hear again
but the fusion never happens
and a crow asks,
"What happens if you run out the door
and no one follows?"

I press my hand into the small of my back
and find the sagging rod of my spine
(just making sure it's still there)
my fingers march, up, searching
for a way to answer the crows
to stop the crows from circling.

I wonder, if I live in my spine
or in the brain in the skull in my head
and I wonder if the birds will be silent
when there's silence in the brain in the skull in my head.