IV Trip

Razeen Ahmed

I thought I saw a shooting star only to see it was a bug illuminated by the lights of 7/11,

And I thought I met God—

Until he asked to crash on my couch and I left him on read and

I still feel guilty about it.

I use glasses, can’t see without them.

One time they got lost in the middle of a garage rock mosh—                                                         

Fell off my face

On the ground for so long, my heart started to hurt.

If before my eyes it’s just a blur, how do I know I’m on the right track?

And yet, amidst the twenty hundred stamps of the stampede of Vampire Weekend fans,

They survived without a crack—

Against all odds of universal entropy, how insane is that?

Something went right for me

For once

And I still think about the seconds of that night,

During the waking hours of my current ones

Thinking how absurd the world works

As I overflow spontaneously like Wordsworth

A thousand pictures in my words, worth a million dollars each.

Silver tongued, I’m still a Star-Bellied Sneetch

As I identify the things that sucked the life out of me

I rip off the leech,

But I forgive the disease.

It knows no better it only knows how to be

And so I simply say, “I can’t judge thee.”