You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.

Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble

the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

I have an axe
with hearts gashed

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

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

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

Now that the Israeli has left, it falls
on me to make the salad.

We stop doing dishes while
a mile unwinds
from the tree outside.