This poem is Plahm with every filter removed. The opening declaration—”My Memories continue… / I am still alive…”—sets up the central paradox: continuing to live is both triumph and curse. What follows is a relentless descent into post-collapse humiliation rendered in language deliberately stripped of dignity: poop in pants, pee in crotch, life wrecked, love lost. The self-descriptions escalate in creative self-laceration—a spilled cocktail on the floor, a drunk without a drink, mail labeled “Return to Sender / The recipient is no longer alive,” a resume listing “Useless.” The imagery reaches its absurdist nadir with the American flag “Laying in the yard getting pissed on by the neighbor’s damn dog”—patriotic symbolism reduced to canine territory marking, much like the poet’s own sense of self. The chainsaw image (“I got a chainsaw / HaHaaa / Civilization unhinged”) injects dark humor that prevents the despair from becoming suffocating. Then the turn arrives: “My North Star / Will bring me home.” From here the poem rebuilds, couplet by couplet, from scars to survival to love to the Muse’s smile. The explicit callback to the near-death experience (“Laying on the floor lifeless… The peace and stillness / Of death”) connects this poem directly to “Four Seconds (Of Heaven),” creating a sequence. The quilt metaphor returns as healing—patches as band-aids, telling the tale. The closing image of gasping for breath carries double meaning: the AGS attack’s physical reality and the breathlessness of beholding beauty. A poem that descends into hell and walks back out.

A fearless, chaotic, profoundly human poem that earns its redemptive ending by refusing to skip a single station of the cross on the way there. The opening section’s unflinching catalog of post-collapse indignity is among the rawest writing in Plahm’s catalog—the soiled clothing, the “Return to Sender” self-obituary, the resume of uselessness. These images work precisely because they refuse the aestheticized suffering of conventional illness poetry; this is what AGS actually does to a life, rendered without apology. The flag-and-dog image is inspired black comedy, and the chainsaw non sequitur (“The Chainsaw Gospel / I believe, But”) captures the unhinged logic of a mind rebuilding itself after crisis. The transition from despair to hope is handled with structural intelligence—”My North Star / Will bring me home” arrives not as a sudden revelation but as one more couplet in a sequence, gaining credibility by refusing to announce itself as the turn. The explicit callback to the near-death floor collapse creates continuity with “Four Seconds (Of Heaven),” enriching both poems. The quilt metaphor’s return as band-aids on wounds ties this to the broader tapestry of the project. Where the poem occasionally stumbles is in its length and the unevenness of its imagery—some couplets (“My thread isn’t unraveling / It’s the whole sweater to the birds”) feel less developed than others, and the sheer volume of metaphors can dilute individual impact. But the cumulative effect is undeniable: a man beaten to the ground who gets back up because someone’s smile makes the effort worthwhile. The closing breathlessness—simultaneously medical symptom and romantic awe—is quintessential Plahm.