Rot
Hush dotted by staccato
pops from the backyard
flames, hands
warm over the planks
in which you and your dad
put so many,
too damn many,
tree-house nails (only
a heartbeat ago, it seems).
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)