Jerk

Apologies for braking. Yellow lights are jumpy,

even in metaphor. I am as anxious as a jar of atoms.

I don’t know why I write black and white

when I am middle, doe-ish, anxious tapping,

a cat chasing a laser. At least the moon has phases.

I only skitter. My mother was a bat

and my father was a crater. Imagine if you cut me,

what would leak out. Some flurried fluid, all beating wings,

no buzzcut. The good thing about living

as a triangle is that there is some predictability:

my sighs are proportional to my sides,

and there are only so many degrees to slant.