Chaos Theory Against a Backdrop of Chaos
       

After weeks, still no furniture
in my apartment. Lost in the halls of Ikea,
I received a text: your uncle has jumped
off a bridge. Beds & linens
became a pool of disembodied eyes,
each one like Uncle Sal's blinking
& twitching wink. The king
of the practical joke had made
his final prank. I imagined how
he climbed the overpass wall
& sailed backwards onto I-95's
oncoming trucks. Certain people walk
backwards through thresholds,
as if in deference to what's left behind.
Others just fall. When did flying
become a bullet point on a long list
of diversions, a checkmark
on a grocery list, a strikethrough
on a rich & littered page? My uncle
became his famous science experiment,
the one his students will talk about
at his funeral & someday
with their children: an egg dropped
without calculation does not survive
the fall—how long had he felt
inside him the ripped yolk
of a shifting planet?

Tweet
Copyright © 2019 Alexis Orgera All rights reserved
from Chattahoochee Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission