Fake Autographs

She’s going to make me go with her

So I’m going to sign fake autographs
And that's how that's gonna work

Every time someone

Puts a piece of paper in front of me

I’m going to sign a name

That’s not mine

She’ll take me to dinners

Where I won’t eat

And parties where I won’t talk

And if someone gives me a cocktail napkin

I’ll put a name on it

That has more vowels than mine does

And a flair at the end

A dramatic flair

I cough all the time now

I spit up blood

I urinate blood

I can’t seem to keep blood

From coming out of me

A comet hit what we call ‘the yard’

In front of our house

Even though it’s really just a pile of sand

And even though she told me

The comet wasn’t a comet

But some other scientific thing

That I couldn’t give a fuck about
I still feel concerned, ya know? About the comet
About the blood

Even though the explosion

Shattered the first layer of high-support glass

That we have on all the windows

She still went to her talk

On Interplanetary Diplomacy

Leaving me to worry that the second

Much thinner

Layer of glass

Was going to break

And vacuum me up into the red dust

Swirling around outside our house

We can’t afford another layer

Of high-support glass

And so the second thinner layer

Will have to do
In addition to the tin foil
I duct-taped over the second layer

The noise of red dust whipping up

Is so loud

I can’t hear myself reciting the names

Of the children

We’re never going to have

When she gets home

From her talk

She'll find I’ve written the names

Of strangers

All over the walls

And on windows

And on the floor

And she'll tell me I'm acting out

And I'll tell her I’m not a child
And she'll tell me to stop acting like one

And I'll call her a bitch

And she'll slap me

And I'll slap her back

And then we'll make love

Because what the hell else

Are we supposed to do?

They’re opening up a storage facility

Less than a hundred yards from our house

And they’re going to keep some kind

Of rocket fuel gasoline something waste there

I tell her that I don’t feel well

I tell her about the blood

In my mouth

In my underwear

That my hair is falling out

That I cough more than I don’t cough

That my lungs are on fire

She tells me she’ll get me an appointment

With the new young doctor

We’re going to get in six weeks

The one that almost died in hyper sleep
But didn't
Because luck, I guess?

Six weeks

I tell her I could be dead in six weeks

And she tells me not to be dramatic

I piss bloody piss

Right on the carpet

So that when she comes home

From another fucking talk

She’ll find it there

And wonder what the hell is going on

That’s all I want

That’s all I really want

I just want her to wonder

What the hell is going on

Red sand keeps piling up

In the guest room

And we don’t know why

We’ve covered every inch of every room

With plastic and duct tape and pieces of wood

We nail into walls and into the ceiling

And wherever we think

The sand might be coming in
And it still
Comes
In

I lick the tips of my fingers

And dip them in the red dust

Covering our guest room

It turns all chalky
Even though she tells me

That’s not how it should happen

She quotes science at me

And I stick my dust-covered fingers

Into her neck

She yells

She barks

She hits me so hard

I fall down and laugh

I laugh at how hard she can hit me

While I’m on the ground

She gets dressed

She puts on a suit

The color of fresh sunburn

And I write names

On the ground

Of all the people
I should have left her for

Most of them thousands of miles away

On a planet
I’ll never seen again

I cough

I hear her pop open her pill bottle

And take something

For the migraines she gets

Whenever she has to pretend

To be happy

A comet that isn’t a comet

Strikes the surface about a mile away

And I wonder what it broke

I wonder if it broke anything

That couldn’t afford

To be broken