my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

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

I myself should never have been born

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

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

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I have observed, the theorist
I am

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

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

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

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