Let’s Start from an Earlier Block of Save Data

I remember the first time we played Minecraft.
Years ago. We spawned in a barren snow biome.
Resources were scarce. We needed food,
so we killed some cows and pigs for raw meat.
Then we spent a long time walking
before we found a tree to punch for some wood.
It was nighttime by then, which means
skeletons were appearing and shooting
us with arrows. They shot our little square heads
and our little square legs and arms and hands
until our screens went red and we were back
at our spawn point with nothing. We rushed
back to our death-piles to reclaim the wood
we had dropped, but immediately got pummeled
with arrows again. Red screen. You Died! Spawn point.
Repeat. We kept trying until a square sun replaced
the square moon and so much time had passed
that our wood had despawned from the ground.
I felt genuine sadness when I realized it was gone.
When you don’t have enough of something
you need, anything can feel like everything.

And I feel that sadness again today
as I grieve standing in front of the toilet, flaccid penis
in hand, a leftover droplet of urine plunging to its death.
I’m not grieving for the urine itself, or for the clear water
I’ve just dyed the color of a pixelated golden apple.
I’m grieving because of the skid mark.

Your skid mark.

Last night’s skid mark.

The skid mark you left on the side
of the toilet bowl before you packed
your bags and got into your mom’s car.

I’m grieving because I drank too much beer
and self-hatred today, and in my fucked-up state,
I didn’t catch myself power-washing
your skid mark from existence.

I never wanted to make it — or you — disappear.
I never wanted to send you back to your spawn point.

Last night’s argument was chaos. Hard mode.
I don’t know why we were speed-running.
We should have zoomed out.
We should have tried different camera angles.
We should have eaten some raw steak and pork,
kept still until our heart meters replenished,
let the skeletons burn in the sun.

The Bee Charmer

There’s a woman in town who performs
healing with a net. I pay to watch

the show, front row, metal folding chair
creaking in the spring grass,
half-brown, half-waking.

She sets the scene like a traveling circus—
a communion of strangers searching
for something together at the edge

of the woods—bodies watching
body brave contortion, brave
the sting.

She stands alone in the center of us, near
the bees. We sit silently and watch
as she laces honey-lacquered twine

around her face, her head. Then
she opens the hive to let the bees swarm
around her most delicate organs.

The sight is beautiful and terrifying
and it’s hard to look away.
But I close my eyes.

I remember that I came here to feel
the bees, not to see them. To be close
to their noise without being
their first target.

I’ve heard that being in the presence
of bees can calm the mind.

I’ve heard that we are attracted to
the things that we fear the most—our body’s
dress rehearsal for disaster.

Sometimes I wish for the worst so that
I don’t have to keep waiting for it.

I imagine drenching myself
in honey. I imagine the bees leaving
my mind and kissing my body

quietly in the grass.
Then contortion, then sting.

Now hum, now
stillness. Now the sound of the grass,
waking.

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