Let me tell you uncomfortable I am
with silence. I am handcuffed
to a joke I can’t tell. Two crows are
where my lungs should be. My exhales
are the shape of birds. This is serious business.
This is an average Tuesday.
Finger in the light socket.
Fork in the garbage disposal.
Recycling bin blown over by the wind.
The week’s detritus spread out for all
the neighbors to see. I’m hungry
but all my knives are too dull to cut anything.
The voice coach said sing
from your diaphragm.
Someday I’ll have an office with a window.
I want unobstructed access to the sky.
An invisible river runs through it.
Bigger than the Mississippi. Bigger
than an eyelash under the world’s
most powerful microscope.

Patrick Meeds lives in Syracuse, N.Y. and studies writing at the Syracuse YMCA’s Downtown Writer’s Center. He has been previously published in Stone Canoe, New Ohio Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Atticus Review, Door is a Jar, Guernica, The Pinch, and Nine Mile Review, among others. His first book, The Invisible Man’s Tailor, is available from Nine Mile Press.