Phaeacia

I gather that
if I painted a jagged
square of plywood
in all black
but with two white blots
in the upper left
and bottom right
with tails trailing off,
down and upwards,
leaving a thin strip
of woodgrain
in the middle of the panel,
then I could be rid of you.

But, somehow,
when the only light
comes off my cable box,
I still see that trail
above my headboard
from the upper left corner,
leaving me behind.

Carson Pytell is a writer living outside Albany, NY, whose work has appeared in numerous venues online and in print, including Artifact Nouveau, The Virginia Normal, NōD Magazine, Rabid Oak and Bluepepper, among others. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Coastal Shelf, and his short collection First-Year (Alien Buddha Press, 2020) and chapbook Trail (Guerrilla Genesis Press, 2020) are now available. In December 2020 he is slated to participate in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project.