![]() Ben Purkert is the author of For the Love of Endings, named one of Adroit's best poetry books of 2018. His poems appear or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Believer, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing at Rutgers and is the editor of Back Draft, a Guernica interview series focused on poetry and revision. He's currently working on a novel because he likes to sufferrrrrrr. THE ONLY EARTHLING they picked on me because I was different the only one with a blue dot on my forehead they rolled a boulder over my face they kicked my shins just to watch me bloom Tell us about Earth they cried but I knew not to answer I only turned a bluer shade the other kids were like a snake that swallows a mouse and for a minute the mouse is neither mouse nor snake simply the shape of one life passing through another I remember life back home it wasn’t so terrible our house had a screen door to keep the bugs out THE ONLY FRIEND
a giant mosquito had me over for dinner it was a nice time I was a nice dinner he could’ve finished me then and there but saved some for later he said he still wanted to be friends though I found it hard to believe he could fly with such difficult wings he tried to prove it but was too drunk and got only inches off the ground so I let him jump on my back and he yelled See I’m flying then I swore I heard him start to cry but what does crying sound like before the tears hit the ground before they fall suddenly to their knees
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