Exhaustion wears me like a sleeve. I have been to Heaven
in my dreams, but wake to this damn leaden Earth.
Not even Hell. Not even Hell. What is salvation but an escape
from yourself? Before my father died, his toes turned black.
They blackened like too-ripe bananas. Before my father died,
we unplugged him from the wall. Then he died. He died,
and again I tell myself death is a transitional state, embodied
as long as the body lasts. The trees do it every year, a miracle
until the beetles bore through their hearts, the trees
crumpling like stale popcorn. Trees don’t have souls. They live and die,
they burn to ash, they become the sky. My soul wears me
down with worry. I am the rock Sisyphus struggles up the hill.
And here, at the top, witness all the hills, every soul and body
cabled together. My father leaves the room. I plug myself in.
Andrew Kozma’s poems appear in Rogue Agent, Redactions, and Contemporary Verse 2, while his fiction appears in Apex, ergot, and Seize the Press. His first book of poems, City of Regret, won the Zone 3 First Book Award, and his second book, Orphanotrophia, was published in 2021 by Cobalt Press. You can find him on Bluesky at @thedrellum.bsky.social and visit his website at www.andrewkozma.net.