I See Myself in Everything

I watched a documentary about a man
who, on his marathon run in the desert,
became lost in the swirl of a sandstorm
He licked the barren land clean to stay alive
mouth oozed with urine, wet wipes, dew off rocks

I wandered the college campus at night
The swirl of the snowstorm twisting my hair
My footfalls led me to the locked chapel doors
I could hear angels inside laughing at me
Licked the door handle for a drop of holiness

The man, with a pen knife and shaky hands,
slit his own cracked wrists, he prayed
for a dust covered death, but the dry heat
clotted his wounds, whispered not today

I didn’t take my pepper spray
with me on my winter stride. I teetered
on the line between road and sidewalk
Body throbbed with desire for the embrace of headlights,
to be rechristened as the heartbreak of headlines

For nine days, he drank the mushed blood of bats,
sucked blister beetles dry, chewed
chuckwallas lizard skin like bubblegum
Until he came across a village of warm soups
and calloused hands that lifted the desert
off his battered brittle back

I am still walking

Biography: Kayla Spears is a poet from the quiet town of Shelbyville, Kentucky. She has won the 2021 Goldenrod poetry competition, and has been published in the Talisman and Zeprhyus at Western Kentucky University.