my eyes are tired and someone is biking across the driveway
and someone is biking across the driveway in a long white dress
how do they know the long white dress won’t be caught
under the wheels, would toss them under the wheels
they would run over themselves
we assume Sade identified as Duc de Blangis
Sade was not a captor in his rollscrawled cell maybe
he made himself a captor so he could understand
why someone was doing this to him, what were they gaining
you walked under gnarling foliage and dis
covered a moat with all the people you weren’t
and could have been. how did you swim?
there is a river where i live and i often walk
away from it. so far from ourselves, we walk ourselves
i don’t love anyone because i refuse to be abusive
— Elim Pilet is a graduate from Hobart and William Smith Colleges. They are from Geneva, New York but currently live in Iowa City. They have previously been published in Seneca Review.