the remaining umbilical.

checking a box on an intake form, you probably only know the label:
the capacity to jump 18 inches.
teaching someone to think only one way, they will find their own back door.

write things down. take record. so these things
can once again exist, if only to be folded, slapped
shut, tossed aside, or re-opened

together the pieces sound hard, definitive. like breathing.

a node choked off so the branch can reach for light.

spending the rest of the afternoon sitting stonefaced on the stoop
in a pale blue smock, a Zuihitsu in a tea mug straight up, on the rocks

a language that sits foreign in the bones

apartments
for rent in an abandoned building.

existential as a y-intercept
regardless of slope.

the scapular barre perfectly perpendicular to the central channel,
trying so hard to have the arms around us like a cup of water

the body sinks as if always seeking lowest ground.

too much to ask for civility in this nation-state:
we are not its first inhabitants so must
respect what already exists, the condition of soil,
what already rests. waiting to be reaped.

I accept the abysmal. I just don’t want to be a dock,
a jumping-off point.

a curb taken too fast has punctured my dantien
breathing has become one minute, has become ten. there
should be no changing constants, no shadows cast against the brick
each weekend has become one minute, at the corner of what’s the point street

road construction ahead
feels like a negative slope
feels like for every five units of m, we lose one unit of change

“show me the action plan,” says the director of whatever. “we need budgets,
outputs, more freshly sharpened pencils.”

the oil of an orange under the nail.
squeezing.

finding our way out of [with h.]

Year seventeen and the cicadas never found their way out of the ground.

A missed return flight. If only to be born of metal.
How to hate the body, so easily broken:
cancerous or full of bullets. How to be
so empty we float, find our way out of
the dirt into the dust on the floor

settling in, or just settling

drinking wine from your hands,
the dizziness of a staircase. we think
we are not in love and that no one can hear us, a sound
like the crack of a sunflower seed opening- what will soon
only be a hard shell. you say i shouldn’t be broken
only in case of emergency, say in the mildest of ways yes.

if home is a confession,
none of us are returning
our ways out of the dirt
our dust on the floor

the door, they say, is for passing, so this is not
another poem about stay

i am okay with that. okay
with the afternoon phone call
to say good-bye. more like too bad
i’ll never see your silhouette
against an east-facing room

my hand on your neck, fluttering

never will i see
these two chests rising and pressing against fibonacci’s attempt at halving this distance between us
halving the atoms between fingers saying
never will i reach you but with this i will try

to leave all our small givens
(as in me to the sand) or you’d let me walk,
call it desert

the planet, Al-Quarif rising over Egypt.
across islands we have found each other.

the color of water in the sky and on your chest
and i knew that my palm pressed against
it would go through, it would go through
the center of this nebulous, this extensive,
this figured out by now, this called
this new kind, this world
should have understood,
this love.

these are the states: cloud, ocean, water in the glass.
my body must always remember that.

the rising of the sea. so empty, we float.

what of the gathering forever in your ocular duct? what of the explosions on your cheek?

all the water in the faucets, in the rivers
the earth has turned to sand. clean
as it has ever been, squeezed through millenia,
through rock. through an ocular duct where it rests,
quivering above a cheek.
all the precious things you've given me
have turned to sand.

the shadow of a pen
my face in the bottom of a drinking cup

you may never again enter this café.
i am okay with that.

i will keep my heart and my belly and my palms
my eyes have been writing songs again
have been bursting open
and your embers fade in our city by the lake.
neither of us, however perforated, are going back.

yes and honesty are two different moments

all the same, eventual patterns of night
one truth begins to unravel. a thread
becomes caught, a button
torn loose and a thumb, fumbling— the pastor begins
his sermon: Who here, among us now, believes in God?

don’t want to kneel to this ordinary noise —a sigh,
an inevitable dizziness like we’ve lost our home in the night
or spent it arguing about an absent rib.

you unfold your hands just outside the window,
check the glass for warmth
a palm across a brow before we go and nothing,
not fumbled thumbs,
nothing will bring us back.

it is okay to see names take flight
you’re not convinced of expirations
suggested sell-by dates
my very breathing.
sand means you, me, glass: two throats turned into stone

for just a moment, i ached. these are the ants across the page.

the rising sun making shards of this morning heavy with scattered light
waking with your elbow in my mouth has punctured our silence
i would do anything not to relive the moments of you
barely drawing breath
our love cancerous or full of bullets

a return flight The script says cry like we’ve lost our house in a fire, rooms full of precious things dreaming of a staircase means we're leaving
dust on the floor means we’re never coming back

a pile of leaving.

the rising sun making shards of this
morning heavy with scattered light

a sigh, an inevitable dizziness
like we've lost our home in the night
or spent it arguing about an absent rib.

you're not convinced
of expirations
suggested sell-by dates
my very breathing.

your elbow in my mouth
has punctured our silence

my eyes have been writing songs again
have been bursting open

don't want to kneel
to this ordinary noise

the rising of the sea

so empty, we float full
of precious things

find our way out of the dirt
onto the dust on the floor.

all lies begin in my head.

all lies begin in my head.
one truth begins
to unravel a thread
becomes caught a button torn loose
a thumb, fumbling—straighten
the hem smooth the collar wipe a
palm across a brow before reaching
for the door. they say in case of
fire, check the knob for warmth.
i say it is okay to see
if the wind will blow it open, will
either fan the flames or hush them
to sleep. buttoning or unbuttoning
the truth. once lying
down,
it is all the same.

and i have come to accept.

see the line. see that it can be straight,
curved, thick, thin, a wave.
see that it is a loop. it is open
or closed. the door slightly ajar.

and i have come to accept that my life cannot be
a straight line but i must do all i can
to just keep the line going

this line is an inspiration. i am having trouble
calling it such, not wanting to connect
the ancestral palms that have been stained
with blood, bearing sword, cross, stone.
but i want to own this. want to be inspired by those
words i won't say whose but to be driven
in this noble pursuit for passion, for faith, for one
continuous breath that connects a rabbi in a
pretty brown town for whom people waved
palms in some kind of medievally chivalrous ceremony
one sunday--maybe someday--

because that is the myth we are trying to connect
with, the harry potters and the justin underdogs
and how, sitting across from you on this thor's day,
the color of water in the sky and on your chest
and i know that my palm pressed against it will
go through, it will go through the center of this
nebulous, this mythological, this effervescent, this
effortless, this extensive, this figured out by now,
this makes your soul soar, this called this new kind,
this world will understand, this love.

this making sense of
this bridging
this breathing

this these two chests rising and pressing against
fibonacci's attempt at halving this distance between us
halving the atoms between fingers curled around a nape
saying never will i reach you but with this i will try
i am here and i cannot stop painting panting
cannot stop this line