June 1 - 4

June 1

a month after she was born, I hold my niece for the first time

for her mother, Johannah

Her weight floats lighter than I imagined,
but oh how heavy her curve
over my chest, tiny feet ready to kick
the ribs over my heart, weak from a car crash.
Gossamer as the hollow between my arms,
I refused to move in case she slipped, unanchored
between safety and the floor, in infinity’s terror
before magic’s made unreal and the floor is realized
in rubbery bones. There should be more time for hurt
to raise out of weeds and alight her body with fireflies.
My eyes flicked from the milia bourne down her nose
to my sister, hazel-loved eyes, milk-smeered, open,
and I Cassandra’d out so many futures: broken
bodies laid out from semi-trucks, glioblastomas, AR-15s, 
and the open casket that’s my heart couldn’t close,
her chubby hand grabbed 
between the ledge and the lip, welding open whatever
steeltrap car crash once passed for my heart.
okay, that’s enough
I passed the biggest soul
back to her mother.

June 2

severance - a cento

lines from Much Ado About Nothing and Star Wars: Clone Wars

I learned from watching you
now I have a future.
There’s nothing you have that I could want.

These are strange times
that only tells a lie and swears it. I cannot be a man
I learned from watching you.

Don’t insult me.
I love you with so much of my heart that
there’s nothing you have that I could want.

But I’m not that person anymore.
I want that back.
I learned from watching you.

I love you with so much of my heart that
once I was just like you.
There’s nothing you have that I could want.

You’re wrong. I was terrified.
It seems to be what you do best.
There’s nothing you have that I could want.
I learned from watching you.

June 3

Rain on Hot Asphalt

It’s the plight of thunder released
after the fiend of lightning slaps the sky,
after the silver bellies of the leaves flay the storm,
after the wind cools the sweet skin stuck between our bodies,
after we’ve come down with each other’s fever,
fervorous to devour each hour, wrap onto each other,
to rough across this sky of bones we’ve rooted.
We move into electric lives of atomic infinity between our skin
and that thunder clap ricochet, the hollow in our hands 
morph with the silver sides of leaves better than the storm can
rocket our bodies. These temporary bodies rock again 
with the span of short rains our frames, storm 
and roll as we pass into other countries,
bodies, leaves, and sky – all forgetting where we bared.

Impact

Hydrangeas flourish on my walk to the hospital
and bloom too early in the spring, like fireworks
of copper chloride, burning in loud, hot crackles.
When the loosest petals sail in autumn’s regalia 
and spread over the potholed streets, I gasp.
What a beautiful coat cast over the city, grander than I
could feel. The blossoms are spring lights for one
soul, summer breath another, and one heart
stuck inside that hospital, respirator clicking
awake – asleep – awake –
those cascading hydrangeas peak
as the curve of a lover’s cheek
and kiss again and again
to speak, criss-crossed over their eyes, 
of a world they held, they could hold 
again, as they raise their hand 
at the glass, prescribed mercy
though it never lasts.