Should I admit
it all started as a pile of phrases
and a symmetry fetish?
Should I credit
nighthawks and traffic
in the liner notes?
Should I care
that all characters think
they are protagonists?
Should I arrive
in stages, like grief
or a movie franchise?
Should I redraw
the constellations because
Orion looks like a butterfly?
Should I ask
who they are?
Should I pull over
to look up song lyrics?
Should I note differences
between stock and broth,
or cemetery and graveyard?
Should I wear
the friend hat,
or the therapist hat?
Should I wonder why
I heard the word differential
in running water today?
Should I cheer on Orion
as he flits away with his dogs
and lands on Scorpio
who is now
a strange flower growing
from a crack in the sky?
