The Fleeting Moment on the Bus During Which I Spied a Dead Thing and a Raven

lines on the road paralyze me redefine me reignite a sort of otherworldly longing in me orange blurs into yellow blurs into black lines blink in and out of a parallel existence / red was never a factor in this but you could never chalk red into your schoolwork, shuddering when the quiet scream of graphite on paper on desk reached your ears you pushed it away saying the color soured in your mouth like the milk your father left on the counter for three and a half nights / like the rushing in my ears and on the rough gray of this highway that is scratching away at my red red heart revealing the peach stone underneath / is eleven too young to have dead eyes to want nothing more than to rest my temple on this bus wall and fade / away but the blood from the carcass by the side of the road won't let me won't fade away it might be a beaver might be a raccoon might be a metaphor for this life i am living in limbo, waiting for the next week's camp waiting for the next month's school waiting for november 7 when we just might fall apart like this rotting animal / edgar allan poe has returned in the form of his nevermore forevermore raven, shining sleekly in the sunlight once buttery now harsh as my eyes take too long to register the black and bloody scene too long because now the bus is speeding past and i am left looking back desperately, desperate for another glimpse of a moment frozen in time / but it is gone and i am gone with it and so i am reduced to yet another backup piece of this heart because who isn't a jigsaw puzzle missing a piece, growing dusty on this back shelf we've been shoved on, reduced to a memory and these lines on the road.