Listening to Pinegrove @7AM, Walking

October whets your teeth, it shatters your ankles
It's a door for 2018 after 2017 nearly killed me.
In the cracks of asphalt, the bleed from music I see patchwork faces,
The swollen wounds from the people I hurt and wish I could say it all different
Or goosestepped instead as an idea or curiousity at best for their own sake.
How many ways can I describe the ghosts?
How long can I hang to the crows staking in the dogwood?
On a fencepost moss peels from morning dew, a lip to a mouth of something else.
And back home Alex sleeps in late waiting on coffee from the next room.
And when I get back from the borderlands and count the dogs on the streets,
I'll have a mug waiting for her and I'll climb in beside her, breaking through.

Andrew Byrds is a queer writer based in Portland, OR. They've had pieces appear in Hobart, Maudlin House, Entropy, Philosophical Idiot, and tl;dr magazine.