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?