The story goes the man waited until the customers

cleared the bank before robbing it. He hoped to be caught,

because he struggled with his health and needed health care

the prison would provide. A plea hearing in May, facing

40 years. The world hurts all over, the ground a circuit of vessels

stamped into bruise. Someone emails me to correct my word choice,

uses the Holocaust as an example, in case it helps to learn 

by example. I walk zero miles today, disappear briefly into

sleep, my nothingness gentle, like meltwater trapped in quartz.

I don’t fear death. The story goes that he chose a young bank teller,

did his best to not scare him. The man took $1,700 from the teller, 

the man waited in his car for the blue lights of police cars. Maybe

he listened to an Eagles song. Maybe rain made slick the hoarfrost. 

Maybe steam rose briefly from dirty ice mounds. A cavalry of finches

perched outside my balcony as the highway droned like a sideways 

heaven half dug into earth. God, I don’t know what to do with this life.