Envoy
I was trying to look a little less like myself
and more like other humans,
humans who belonged, so I put on a skort.
Purchased in another life, when I had a husband
and wrote thank-you notes and held dinner parties,
the skort even had its own little pocket,
and the fingerprint stains yellowing the fabric
were almost invisible, nothing to be ashamed of
as I walked past homes and faces
with their welcome signs and their no-trespassing signs.
I was hoping to look domesticated,
or at least domesticable,
that I too could walk the trails
and then return home, stretch out
beside another human and watch something
on a big screen until it was time to sleep.
I too had veins at my wrist,
and I’d read Maslow,
with his hierarchy of needs.
I remembered that love and belonging
were pretty basic, and that at the top
of the pyramid was transcendence.
Late that night I took off the skort
and lay down on the kitchen floor of a house
where years ago a boy and hisoverdosed in the basement, a fact
