The online fire safety training voice wants me
to stay alive. He believes the closest door will
let me keep eating Pink Lady apples,
dip the tips of my boots in puddles,
watch strangers talk to each other,
stand down-wind from bakeries,
give names to ducks, yawn
as far as the muscles in my mouth let me,
scrunch clouds up like tissues,
press the windows of skyscrapers
with my finger tips and hear them pop,
nod at squirrels, draft letters to you,
sit on benches with nothing to do
or think about and nowhere to be
other than inside skin that is sometimes fire
I’ve never understood how to stop.

© Carl Burkitt 2022