I Believe I Have Become a Sidekick to My Own Condition
“Everything’s working great!”
~Miles ‘Tails’ Prower
(Sonic Adventure, 1998)
“Sonic is gone, Amy. & Tails is…Tails has just lost it.”
~Silver the Hedgehog
(Sonic Forces, 2017)
This recovery cannot have artifacts, just a chip
planted in my forehead. It says five years & solicits Christian praise,
cleansing the pins from dust. I attempt to blow new life
into my last working memory: the choreography
of a cutscene — a fox rescued from denial by the ghost
of his beloved — a wrench in his coping mechanisms.
What is left to grieve when loss is taken away? We cannot
rob each bottle; they hold captive smaller lives
& the Catholic in me wants a fully stocked bar
five-feet & ten-inches from my bed. I need a floating body
between us. I need an obstacle to silence. I need
explosions to denote freedom, bursting through altars
of old credit cards & glassy hills. My hands are still
empty in prayer. For each pore can become a wound —
an upstream tunnel filling reservoirs. When the battery dies,
synapses leak & meet a sea of sleepless nosebleeds
to contaminate an ocean. I baptize all my possibilities
with a name. I’ve played a level for every path. I know
which one ends with a body. Addicts don’t have gold rings
to stay afloat. We get hooked up to our own dead
machines & drown in our own lungs. I ask the fox to fix us.
He tries to wash away the rust & unbury
the screws. He counts everything in the toolbox
like a mass eulogy. He wishes his beloved back
until the memory is accepted as substitute.
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