This Room Has a Ghost / Stephanie Goehring

  Stephanie Goehring writes and paints in Charlottesville, Virginia. She blogs at http://boxfordcourt.blogspot.com . I'm Probably Lying** But I first overdosed to understand your addiction to injury, your obsession with chainsaws. After the butterfly flew backward (the thrum of its wings so white) and the bees confessed their immortality, I forgot you, remembering how god created the world from nothing but a scythe and the way his declaration of light fell on a field of beans. I overdosed again and found forgiveness was a man walking through the lack of rain, wet to his bones. He was wearing your clothes and said, "History is like cedar: Get some nails for your palms or burn it for warmth," so I let the kerosene lick my throat. I awoke coughing blood, pulling splinters from between my teeth. After the wood turned to dirt, the dirt turned to beans and the bees turned up dead on the butterfly's wings, I remembered god and how she created the world with no memory of who