I was born at 11:11 a.m. though
I didn’t believe my mother
for too little time. How many times
have I told you, she said,
exasperated. How many times.
When I was 3,
I learned German and French
from the warnings
printed on my crib.
At age 6, I developed a sensitivity
to the color of the ceiling.
Mother’s headboard
was a mirror: I sat like a fossil,
studying my own wet skin.
In middle school, I gave a speech
about middle school, ran out
of unused names halfway through,
so I started poking holes
in my tongue.
For years, a museum
of destructive habits
(plucked leg hairs, sleeping on a cliff)
has begged to stay original.
The heel of my palm
presses
into my eye
to see better,
as if they are held, not kept in the skull,
and would roll away like a soccer ball
at the lip of a
forest.
I wear my contacts once every week
at best, every time I leave the house
at worst.
I lost the ability
to form habits in 2017
when I drove past my old home
and the inhabiting hag had hung
two green lanterns
flanking the door.
It was June. It was a day I had forgotten
my glasses and
left hand,
and the fog on the window
couldn’t get any brighter.