variant

Someone on a podcast defines

‘harm’ as ‘tissue damage

to the body’. It will never go away.

It just hides for a while

beneath your bed, 100-year

hibernation of cicadas.

I brood. I bomb a hospital

and bicker with you

over nothing, really.

Now I have to burn

everything I’ve achieved,

and you mistake my collapse

for just another beachside condo.



Nathaniel Duggan is a former mattress salesman.