Worth Reconstruction

Senior year of college, I have nothing left 
to lose of myself. I live with four friends 
in a should-be-condemned house. The weather-
damaged doors don’t whisper  

their wishes because restoration 
sounds a lot like renovation, 
and when all you want is to be 
demolished, you don’t dare plead  

your prayers lest they be 
misheard. When the downstairs power 
goes pre-industrial, which it does once 
a week, I go to my bathroom and tap the vacant  

outlet with my middle and ring 
fingers, bring light back to the living 
room, an automatic upgrade for the kitchen. 
I walk to the deck, the one that caught  

fire after Kelly and I left 
embers in the ashtray, tell friends 
and schoolmates I’ve never met, 
I’m young, I’m poor, I have no will.  

One of these days, I’m going to die 
tapping on that outlet. Just dole out 
my belongings. Sarah says, 
I don’t want any of your things. Just a lock  

of your hair for when I take molly. I stamp 
out my cigarette and feel an unfit 
dwelling for anyone’s words of worth. I have little 
to offer of my crumbling body—plasterboard  

lungs patched with scraps of black tar smoked 
through a straw, limbs laced with burn 
holes and bruises from nights 
spent in narcotic-numb-nods, walls  

of my heart spattered with knuckle indents. We pretend 
to have Fight Club in the backyard as if that isn’t totally 
toxic. The windows watch us with held 
breath, reluctant to render any signs of life  

left within. Ben is a homeless clown, 
has a stick and poke tattoo of the word 
eyebrow where his right eyebrow is shaved 
off. He finishes my drugs to protect me 

from myself and is the only one who will hit me 
with full force. When his fist 
connects to my chest I choke 
on laughter, spit out self- 

disgust thick as paint. There is no empty 
electrical socket or touch gentle 
enough to rewire me whole, just so much more 
to tear down. A decade and a half  

into a future I never foresaw, I will think of the house 
I expected to die in. If I could reach back in time, 
I would place my hand on its threshold and say, 
you don’t have to be destroyed just to be rebuilt.

Miriam Kramer is a queer, Jewish poet residing in New Jersey with her partner and two cats. Her poetry has appeared in Variant Literature, So to Speak Journal, FreezeRay Poetry, and others. She is the author of three chapbooks. Miriam has read poems to friends and strangers in many parking lots and established venues across the US.