There are Times I Dress Up so I Don't Feel Despair

Some nights I lie awake, dressed in a wedding tuxedo. I am on my best behavior. When I can’t sleep, I practice my vows to anything listening: the moth flirting with the banker’s lamp, the cobwebs I’ve yet to purge, shadows on the wall that are really an angel’s hands kneading the darkness.

I forge rings out of cigarette smoke and slip my finger through them.

In college, I fell in love and since then I’ve been falling one year through the next.

If the God of love is present, speak in a way that I will pretend I heard: selective hearing. Regardless, this tie is too tight; I take my cufflinks off. Tomorrow night, I’ll exhume my left bottom rib to feed to the foxes and crows, scrape away all the excess clay from my eyes. I am too deep in love with this world to construct a lover where there is none.

These eyes have seen the coming of many – too many – Lords, and, unvoiced, watched them go.

Samuel J. Fox is a bisexual essayist and poet living in rural North Carolina. He is currently poetry editor for Bending Genres LLC. He is the recipient of the Gilbert-Chappell Award for Poetry (2013) and was a runner up for the Ron Rash Award in Poetry. He is located in Statesville, NC. He tweets @samueljfox.