Hello. Let us fire away with the questions.

No pun intended.

Beyond all reasonable doubt,

in which crevice of your skeleton

does laughter echo?

And where exactly does pain hurt you?

Just curiosity about the personal,

lived

affective experience of your everyday life.

I’m sorry, forgive me.

Mr. President —

In your solitary night

where not even the crickets sing to you

are you capable

of hearing how the corners of your bones bleed?

I would like to know,

Mr. President,

how you experience toothaches.

Or whether sometimes hanging from your ears

you feel the murmur of all the humble questions

you have never asked,

as if they were falling down a ravine

clinging to a bullet

resisting death.

Thank you. Just one more teeny-tiny doubt to raise.

Oh, forgive my gaze

My interest is not to offend.

I was just taught that lying was bad.

When spring arrives,

do your nostrils get blocked?

Is that why you get angry and think about explosives?

Or is it perhaps the drowsy flutter of pollen

that has caused you an addiction to sparks?

These are not criticisms, President.

I can remove the Mr.

After all, we are already acquaintances.

I genuinely want to know if your tears are salty,

if you have ever stuck gum under a table.

Let us talk about that. Your childhood.

Without biography, only technicolor.

Tell us.

Do you miss your mother?

At what volume did she sing lullabies to you?

As a child, were you more afraid of Medusa or Mary?

Have you heard of the word tenderness?

When did you lose your innocence?

Now you want to take it away from others as if negotiating in a casino of crayons.

The loser will have to paint from their grave.

Only the brown color left.

We are almost finished.

I will not take much more of your time.

I know you have a couple of oranges to devour before the day ends.

As for me, I also long to return home.

We just want to prove

if the body is a place where nothing dies.

Does your navel gather

cotton or coal?

The vaults inside your body

we crave to know if they are dark or clear,

and if

the secret murmur of the moths’ corpses

that you ate for lunch

manage to tickle you from inside.

Your neon-colored laughter does not scare me, President.

Glass cannot withstand history.

Even your eardrums can burst.

We appreciate your time, you may leave now.

We are all evacuating. Thank you for the courtesy

of bombing the building.

This piece was originally published in Issue 1 of the print edition of Ordinary Matters magazine.