Between Bruises & Blooms

There is nothing
waiting to kill me
on the sidewalk.

I know this.

I know the grocery store
is just fluorescent lights
and milk
and strangers
who will forget my face
before I reach the parking lot.

I know
the street is only a street.

But my body
has never cared much
for facts.

It hears danger
in the turning of the doorknob.

My chest becomes
a locked room.

My lungs forget
they were built
to open.

Every possible disaster
puts on its shoes
before I do.

So sometimes
I stay home.

Not because
I do not want the world—

God,
sometimes I want it
so badly.

I want coffee shops
and aimless drives
and places
I have never been.

I want to leave
without rehearsing
how I might escape.

I want the front door
to be a door

and not
the mouth of something
waiting to swallow me.