Crosshairs by Sandra K. King

My dearest perceptive one,
how do you know that I am not truly here?
I can be,
or could be,
but this body is exhausting, so
I am coasting in a space
just above and behind my eyeballs
where I don’t have to deal with full body chills
and the feeling there’s a hoard of termites
chewing into my cervical vertebrae at the base of my skull.

It might appear I’m asleep
but no worries,
sleep won’t come until I am being counted upon,
like a sheep with an impressively full schedule,
to show up for something--
to dare to show my face around these parts.

There are men outside
who want to ask me
the questions
their wives have already answered,
using their best babytalk voices,
the sweet, masked condescending kind that used to turn them on.
I don’t have the energy to ignore them,
let alone acknowledge
they’ve located my home.
I wonder if they think I’m alone.

I close the shades of my eyelids, reminding myself
I don’t have to let them in.
They’ll see my skillful denial of object permanence
and capacity to confound their crosshairs as witchcraft.
Isn’t that hilarious?
You see, they behave as if they believe
their desires--
mislabeled as needs--
are my problem.
It’s funny. I tell myself it’s very funny.

I try to ignore their whispering gossip
as the humorless, cold-hearted, static-riddled sighs
creep up my front porch
like a dry ice fog
punctuated by mechanical sounds
like firearm safeties being disabled.

You know, I’d really hoped they’d left their guns
at home
securely locked away in cabinets
like priceless curios on display to impress
their buddies,
cleaned and waiting like spirited spaniels
to be taken out again
and used like garden spades to
dig themselves with ecstatic bliss
into personality cult’s abyss.

I can hear your voice though,
breeching orbital and cerebral veil
over the mumbling, outraged fray.
Because you, my dearest perceptive one?
You, know exactly where to find me.