I can tolerate risk. I’ve placed myself 

in bright risk all across my time 

in this body. Sun shining down at it 

from all directions. Three lines in 

and already talking about the riskiest thing 

I own, can’t stop calling 

attention to it. The body, wet around its points 

of entry as it walks the store

mask wire pinched around the nose. 

Breathing its own breath to minimize exposure. 

In the early 2010s a car slows on a deserted street

and a window opens, someone leaning out 

to ask my body if it should be walking here. 

Or in college, fingering pills to make it fall

asleep on an uncovered mattress on a floor. 

Not my pills or floor. I could lose myself in nostalgia 

for things that could have turned out badly for my body 

but didn’t. I held myself loosely, and I lucked out.

Said fuck this to reality and woke up covered 

in rose petals. Learned zero lessons. 

Then there are the risks not based in luck: 

Ask yourself whether you have an appetite 

for it says the investment site.

For risk do I have an appetite. Me personally.

As framed this way, appetite is not about sustaining 

organic life but instead about money

and thus has potential to make more money 

which creates additional distance 

which keeps on lowering risk. The metaphor 

becomes less beautiful. Money is a bunting 

that in its comfort leaves you desirous of the void. 

If you have no money you’re just plain hungry 

and fix your soupy corneas on something 

to tolerate its lack. Emptiness in the being. 

Capable of being filled only in your dreams.

No money means capacity to endure 

but money means you can have a strong desire. 

At either edge you can pretend.

But where does desire live

and where the stamina required to outrun it. 

At the foundation of everything a body. 

With its neverending wants. Like an isolated horse

that likes to startle itself for thrills.

Standing in the light so hilariously alone

while a threat comes over a nearby hill.