Leaving Yourself Behind by Kieran Householder

Today I decided where we were.
I was a bleached mattress in the street by Domino’s Pizza.
Secretly I was as dirty as the trampled snow. 

I was invited to sail a ship,
but I was ensnared in academia.
Idiocy
is an ideal we sometimes cannot approach.

I became a tree in New England,
sturdy and full of sap.
Every forty degrees I collected myself,
made syrup.

I am this dusty blue being,
a windowless log cabin.
I come from lumberjacks in Sweden.

I swear I am the something beneath a thing,
the life beneath some pulse.