However many times I've been fronted, 
I speak my debt solemnly into a hairbrush, 
my face a swollen light bulb in the scalloped vanity
frame. Enter the clowns, a choreography made
to look broken. A test: A rehearsal of my best
apology to two sluggish x's of a dead cartoon back
in the room I want to leave again: cheap wood
with inked-on rings, beige carpet tattered as a thought
thought too often. Your teeth glowing red, 
eyes reflecting cherry cherry heart. Here again
Pisces in spilled pills. How historic 
all the glittering girls who constellate bathroom floors
in a thousand cities. I think: this thought 
is nothing new. I'm safe caught in my fishnet moon. 
I catch the assistant's eye, watch her disappear
white rabbits in white light like quivering snow. 
An official voice strings ma'ams together
like Christmas lights, his face framed
in a blue light ailing. I collapse the town 
into a misshapen box, twist my fingers into lazy L's. 
See a fish skeleton stripped from a sigh scattering its debt
like sheep or snow, see breath ribboning
a string to follow in the woods to get home. 
Under the manic trees, see the world a moon gauzed
through mothwings holding up the dark. 

Rebecca Boyle is from China, Maine. She graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with an MFA in poetry and now lives in northern Minnesota, where she teaches writing.