Instability
keep the sound out keep your hands to yourself let me think on my own loneliness does not faze me at all companionship is the root of all my problems wait for me to come to you or else I will shatter at your feet Going Backwards today caffeine lacks its usual potency I am out of my body a hollow chalky sound bouncing off a long hallway stumbling further and further from where i belong after you left I fell into a sinkhole where i started beating myself up over losing you Invisible Violins for Krystal We listen to a song from a contemporary composer. She closes her eyes Fingering every note (in the air) I try to imagine Krystal's violin in her hands, but it doesn't come into full colour. Later, I conjure an image of Krystal with her fingers weaving along my spine - across my shoulders, forming wings. She's following a different melody now, wings unfurling, statuary. We can fly. Emotional Barriers Invisible walls got their name because every time we think we're breaking ground, we pratfall on our flummoxed asses. Hang out with enough emotionally unavailable people and the falls become abrasive, impaled by boulders in a lake of fatalism. Blind devotion means hitting your head on the way down. Confessional I still eat chocolate bars and cake. They fill me to this day. Faith catches me with a left hook on occasion, and on those occasions I'm glad I prebooked a date with a pine box Available plots are becoming fewer and far between, land splitting six ways from Sunday. Bio from 2020 Samuel Strathman is a poet, author, educator, and the founder/editor-in-chief of Floodlight Editions. Some of his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in White Wall Review, Blank Spaces, Dreich Mag, and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, "In Flocks of Three to Five" was published by Anstruther Press (2020) His second chapbook, "The Incubus" was published by Roaring Junior Press
Fevers of the Mind 
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