Andi Myles
Please exit
A list of found text
please do not knock
please do not disturb
please do not trespass
please do not enter
please do not walk here
please do not run
please do not talk
please do not talk loudly
please do not yell
please do not sit here
please do not sit on the edge
please do not move
please do not touch
please do not touch me
please do not play me
please do not lean on me
please do not scare me
please do not use me
please do not break me
please do not open me
please do not open yourself
please do not stay
A List from the Junkyard of Found Prose
(After In the Museum of Lost Objects by Rebecca Lindenberg)
“We never love a person, but only qualities."
Blaise Pascal
Find unmarked cards obscuring what is here:
censored letters from a death row inmate,
lecture notes from a tedious professor,
a bamboo grimoire, and forgotten scribbles
from a forgettable acquaintance strewn about the floor;
blank pages from an undergraduate poet mixed
with unopened letters from a distant relative.
You misunderstand the minutiae
of existence, tiny wildernesses
stand full of its mundanities—washing dishes,
waiting in line, shifting afternoon light and
outside this warehouse, full walls insufficient to hold
the unsent emails from a workplace enemy
My friend, I have not answered the god
who requested a full accounting
of all the write-only documents I can
never erase. Far away, a crowded forest
quiets without the collection
of deleted texts from an ex unearthed
after a long-concealed absence. You despair,
but you have not discarded the shopping lists
I wrote for you. As for the rest, my atonement
was never meant for you.
Andi Myles (she/her) is a Washington DC area science writer by day, poet in the in between times. Her favorite space is the fine line between essay and poetry. She is the author of the chapbook Fractured Symphony (Cathexis Northwest Press) and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chestnut Review, Rattle, Fourth Genre, and Tahoma Literary Review, among others. You can find her at www.andimyles.com.
