আকাশ

My parents named me Light because their lives lie in shadow but I’m a poor example of joy. Sometimes I get so sad I think about eating a quesadilla, or assembling a tire swing, or taking off my bra. Instead I dream of the big dumb heart my mother hands me. She tells me to carry it. I drop it every time.

“He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark teens that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought, The birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fun and those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicate for the sea.”

“It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore. And yet I cannot let it go. I cannot let it go.”

“I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.”

[...] the sound of desire is so loud / it burns like coal

“Why can’t you see me? Why can’t I stop / needing you to see me?”