this isn’t where he thought he’d end up, this isn’t where he hoped to be, the fortune teller said she saw him free like the breeze but he never expected to be a macabre law ornament

she read his palm, his life line lost at sea, his love line a hyphenated long since erased, he’d taken to using sandpaper to erase any fingerprints or antedoctal evidence he ever existed

she flipped the cards and they all showed death inverted, the hanged man, only two per deck on repeat across the black stain cloth, she apologized and reshuffled only for it to fall the same

it was no surprise to him, not really, he had the same dream every night since he was four, of a cold wind and his neck in a rope, the neighborhood kids with ball bats and hungry eyes

the sing song nursery rhyme they would all mutter as they swung for the fences, the wet thuds loudly ringing in his cold ears, he would happily hum along with them if he could through swollen lips

swinging
like a pinata
from
the branches
of the
hangman’s tree
floating
in the breeze
from
the branches
of that
hangman’s tree