we drove on through
the blue seal of morning as the turbines
turned and winked out their hearts

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

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

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

I myself should never have been born

I have observed, the theorist
I am

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

In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote

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

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

this is what I want you to to see:
leaves falling because it is too late for them not to

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

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

Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place

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