Urgent Care

By Ricardo Vidana

Slumped,
propped up on a chair
all dizzy painful
in the urgent care room
I see a spider crawling towards
me across the peeling vinyl tiles
and I think of how out of place
both of us are.

We’re wasting away in here, buddy.

What does a spider eat in here?
The flaked dead skin
falling off nervous tick scratches?
The left over blood confetti
from the car crash dance sermon?

Why do we stay in the stale,
sterilized, 70 Fahrenheit air?

There’s a little rock 3 billion miles away
that we’ve traversed the empty to see
and I’m afraid to cross the street,
to make contact with the space in between
some other person’s irises.

Will you bite some life into me?
Give me a reason to hurt.
Give me a reason to say there’s some poison in me
and this time it wasn’t me who put it there.

Spin me something to hold me together
instead of hanging myself with.

Buddy, I am tired.
Utterly alone with others, who like me
have made mistakes and depended on them.

I was born in a place of pyramids so high
you can knock on the lords door.
Of cenotes leading to the sacrificial underworld.
Of Oyamel fir trees who once a year explode
all kaleidoscope with monarchs wanting to live a little longer.
And I’m foreign firecracker illegal in this state.

I’m sad but this drought has me without tears to cry anymore.