Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.

I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt

I myself should never have been born

My grandmother asked, “Does it feel like being widowed?”

I count my homes—
those of my scattered youth
the sanctuary of our young family
the intermittent rest stops
of apartments and vacations.

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.

You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat

If my life was the size of my arm, I would stretch it out for you.

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”

Part of being a good sad person
is always painting the shadows
in the right direction and knowing
what sorrow to art with.

If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house

We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…