Done with all that isn’t done with him yet. Done with bully dark. Done with running all night from the orphanage’s nuns set aflame by their own torches. Done with running all the way back to that first dawn, bare-assed. Done with pummeling Adam back to hard dust, a hard reset. Done with all the names of this world, and none of them his own. Done with regret, he didn’t do anything wrong. Done with shadow, renaming it enough. Done with property owners and managers, pawnshops that won’t trade him a bottle of Dollar Tree anti- diarrheal for his hypothermia. So done with struggling up, unsure of making it. Done with making it and done with being made every morning again.
Pete Miller is the author of the chapbook Born Soap (H_NGM_N). A graduate of Arizona State University’s MFA program, he lives in Omaha, Nebraska where he works in homeless services. He co-edits the online poetry journal A Dozen Nothing.
