Boxes

In dreams where we invoke
           the future, we are done
     with the idea of Black Friday sales
and camping on sidewalks overnight
           for the latest gaming glasses or hundred-
     twenty-foot TV screens. We are done with
counting the dead and burying the dead,
           and drowning in the shorter and shorter
      seasons that come between storms and artillery
fire. There's nothing that money could buy to prime 
           the body for the kind of success 
      premised on forgetting everything about
its origins. I am not unfamiliar with the dark,  
           but I admit I've been afraid to look it 
      in the eye. I want to scale it like the blind man 
I read about who climbed Everest, navigating every sheer
           cliff by echolocation. And I want to empty all 
      that I've packed all my life into small, separate 
compartments so they finally lose the power to seal 
           my lips, steal my joy. I am sick of starving 
      my heart, sick of marking my back 
with sticks and crosses.