What are they looking at, over there? I can’t make out

their line of sight, like on that chemistry test we did 

so poorly on back in high school, where the base seemed

OK, but then there were all these random numbers across it,

waving, as they’re now waving and if it’s not at us 

then who could it be? Turning around to see 

would be giving away too much, like how my mother 

used to say “if I lose my mind shoot me,” and then 

when she lost her mind, we couldn’t agree on 

what she’d meant. “Take me out back and shoot me” 

isn’t on the DNR forms, so we stand by the hospital window

looking out at nothing in particular, still waving at us, 

like it’s trying to get our attention. Maybe it’s simply the wind

that writes these things down that make of themselves

something completely foreign to any conception 

we were working from. They look like flags, but made-up ones,

like in movies, where you want to have a villainous 

enemy country, but you don’t want to piss off 

any real ones. They fly over us as if we exist solely 

to be flown over, like the Republic of Anchuria. In the end

there are so many they don’t seem like many at all.  

Like knowing, from the Greek word for heavy, 

Barys, Barium is pronounced as BAR-ee-em.  

It’s never found free in nature, and once we make the joke,

saying “barium in the backyard backyard backyard,” 

we say it again more slowly, “backyard backyard 

backyard,” where the past will have consumed all this 

by then and any stray thought that might’ve saved us.