Hypervigilante

HYPERVIGILANTE

I’m so scared, bound

To eyes like shifting lakes

Rippled by the sound

Of autumn rakes,

By conversations studded with posts,

Words that look back and glare,

Words that creak like old time ghosts

And rattle up the stair.

No one is innocent

Beneath the smile they hate.

My attention’s never spent

And I always calibrate

The distance to a stranger’s

Shadow creeping up the path,

The speed and time of danger’s

Crest and crash. Calculate the math.

This is how I make it home,

With a bomb and a metronome.