Sabrina

17

The Asphyxiation of Strawberries

Saddles are for corpses, the kind
that tousle their fingernails in formaldehyde
and use chalk to pencil in weathers

for their microcosmic thunderscreams.
They taught me to use sonar as a
substitute for sight, a rapped tongue

for testing braille markers on the
bathroom walls, because in essence
that’s what resurfaces after the

wicks burn out and we are told that
the real artists and sidewalk versions
of ourselves are selling paper knapsacks

to the storm clouds before the television
crowds come and force all the strawberries
back into their own lonely oblivion.