i am thinking about my parents’ heartbreak when they lost 1 house, then 2. i am thinking about my father blaming himself for his own systemic ravaging. i am thinking about my mother getting on her knees & praying for safety as the life they were coerced into collapses all around them under its own burdensome dream. i am thinking about us all as the fingers of a world tender with shame & famine. i am thinking about my parents fighting over interest rates & loans with the gall to demand mathematical truth. i am thinking about education as a commodity on chokehold, bestowing while taking away like tiny paper cups of methadone. i am thinking about my hospital bills & regret ever signing those checks. i am thinking about the world as a body sick with grief & wars/gouges & plunder, what feels like an absurd back & forth in place when we are actually losing. when the skin is breaking where we’ve amassed the most. i think of my father cradling his head like an eggshell when i say survival is too lofty a goal. i think of my father loosening his belt after feasting on church barbecue & wonder why this is not enough/why we play any games just to win/why pleasure can’t be a goal unto itself. i think of us as the fingers of a dying body, touching & feeling, performing the last instinct to hold & flex & let go as the crash cart stops in the hallway.