to be ready for it

I am tired of having hands she said I want wings – But what will you do without your hands to be human? I am tired of human she said I want to live on the sun – Pointing to herself: Not here. There is not enough warmth in this place. Blue sky, blue ice the blue rotunda lifted over the flat street – and then, after a silence: I want my heart back I want to feel everything again – That’s what the sun meant: it meantscorched – It is not finally interesting to remember. The damage is not interesting. No one who knew me then is still alive. My mother was a beautiful woman – they all said so. I have to imagine everything she said I have to act as though there is actually a map to that place: when you were a child – And then: I’m here because it wasn’t true; I distorted it – I want she said a theory that explains everything in the mother’s eye the invisible splinter of foil the blue ice locked in the iris – Then: I want it to be my fault she said so I can fix it – Blue sky, blue ice, street like a frozen river you’re talking about my life she said except she said you have to fix it in the right order not touching the father until you solve the mother a black space showing where the word ends like a crossword saying you should take a breath now the black space meaningwhen you were a child – And then: the ice was there for your own protection to teach you not to feel – the truth she said I thought it would be like a target, you would see the center – Cold light filling the room. I know where we are she said that’s the window when I was a child That’s my first home, she said that square box – go ahead and laugh. Like the inside of my head: you can see out but you can’t go out – Just think the sun was there, in that bare place the winter sun not close enough to reach the children’s hearts the light sayingyou can see out but you can’t go out Here, it says, here is where everything belongs

Lines in Late April

And the reason I am writing this on the back of a manila envelope now that they have left the train together is to tell you that when she turned to lift the large, delicate cello onto the overhead rack, I saw him looking up at her and what she was doing the way the eyes of saints are painted when they are looking up at God when he is doing something remarkable, something that identifies him as God.

  So far, pockets are good

  Through the window screen I can see an angle of grey roof and the silence that spreads in the branches of the pecan tree as the sun goes down. I am waiting for a lover. I am alone in a solitude that vibrates like the cicada in hot midmorning, that waits like the lobed sassafras leaf just before its dark green turns into red, that waits like the honeybee in the mouth of the purple lobelia.

if only you could see yourself now, you’re settling back into a quiet autumn and you’ve missed the smell of must, rain, and tobacco kissed into the corners and couches of the same house you share with seven others. you miss the girl who used to sleep on your couch who had the skull of the bird she is named after tattooed across her arm. you are glad you stopped drinking. it’s 2am and you’re staying up far too late. you have an interview for a job in the morning that you will come to hate in 2 months. you’re not in love the way you expected. some memories turned into broken drawers that you chose to store all your knives in, every time you open them, they always come spilling out towards you. you miss having sex with people you also love. precariousness is now the pillow you sleep upon, and you no longer have such structured repeating romance. you no longer have such a structured repeating life, and I know it killed you that you knew it wasn’t forever. i know i can’t stop you from panicking, but it will all make sense. you repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat until you realized it was too early to build such a life based on repetition. you’re settling back into a quiet autumn, and you’re stone sober at 4am after a Friday night while the world starts to makes a strange kind of sense, the same way words become meaningless when repeated enough times. all of this is to say, you made it this far, and i’m proud of you.

What’s Broken