There was a blue man outside my room today.
He prowled the rooftops with shovels for limbs
and an excess of tombstones strapped to his chest.
He frowned at my window with gelatinous dimples.
Had lost his features as though they melted off his face.
In response, I pasted giant googly eyes to his forehead
and hid the crinkled receipt from his new gaze
as one would a proper gift. Asked him how he felt.
Suddenly, he was more green. Cerulean, as if he
had swirled a bit of the cosmos in his molded flesh.
He told me he wanted to plant a forest tonight.
His saplings were strewn out to dry in a damp prism
of emerald. Wondered if he could tuck into
their asthmatic shadows like patchwork
of laughing darkness. Already removed his eyes
so they couldn’t show him the dawning world
as the sun blew away his warmth from their stems.
He’d wanted to hide, he said. I’d thought otherwise.
I wove cornea from the psalms of mourning doves
and hooked them into the rumbling, convex plastic
coating his new vision. He was a sickly gold, now,
splayed on the glass like a star before a black hole.
Said he knew I’d kill him today. Suck the evening
sky out of his skull like unnecessary trephination.
You all do. Doesn’t matter, I’d decided. He would die
without the lobotomy, anyway. Well, something of him
would. I chiseled his lunar name into another tombstone
and placed it in his stretched knapsack. Plunged the pick
beneath his jittery pupils and began our work.
Watched the world spill greedily out of him. His chest
concave. We’re always devoured by stars, regardless.
Felt his head go cold as the ground turned orange.