"Curbside" by Kajsa Palacios

Sometimes I can see myself walk the plank from really, really far away.

I spy my own watery grave

From a remote little island.

A flea abandoning a labrador.

Just a speck on a y-axis.

I can’t swim away from its shores.

I’m just simply, frustratingly, there.

A telephone pole,

A rail spike,

A stop sign.

Occasionally I spot a mollusk or five in the indigo pool that imprisons me.

They hum,

Like carburetors.

They purr like a six-cylinder.