what corpse can turn the other cheek?

we’re all in the belly of the beast, but some of us are tapeworms.

as a young person inheriting a world doused in gasoline, i’d do anything to hold off the match a little longer.

when you’ve memorized where the walls are
and all the lightswitches
every step of the stairs
passing through doorways you can’t see
that you know are there
a perfect blackness full of familiar things

scratched, scarred, sunburnt
frayed, fraught, fragile
gnashed, gnarled… gnome’d

the planet’s hearse
a greenhouse full of barren earth
our teardrops in the arid dirt
who did this?