1.

Another morning slaps hard

across my face.

Fluent in dark, my eyes

don’t know what to do with light.

I stumble after breakfast,

the daily scrape

of butter on burned toast.

Milk skims my coffee, a skin

stretched too thin.

Childhood can be defined by the number

of skinned-knee scabs

flushed down the drain.

2.

Dry another day.

Not even a small throat

of rain.

Opening the fridge, I prepare for war.

Nestled in a porcelain bowl,

orange peels whiff of decay.

I swallow.

I am all dirt.

No water.

3.

Across the street, a balcony

mirrors my own. For breakfast,

a shirtless man attempts to slice

a mango in the sun.

He does not know what to do with the skin.

Next door to him,

a duct-taped mannequin

hawks bracelets like handcuffs.

How slowly the man chews.

Hunger growls,

shivers my iron chair.

All metal craves sound.

4.

I stay longer than necessary, watch the sky

become a danger to herself.

I was thinking of a home I never had:

Mississippi, land of highways

smothered in pine.

Land of fat and tar.

Yesterday, the green fields of memory

tried to convince me

that we are not doomed.

Remember that time

we couldn’t stop talking about time?

The past is a hunter.

The future its feathery nest.

5.

Tonight wears more bad luck.

The clouds have pushed east,

taking all that falls with them.

Back on the balcony,

my shadow is a hoax.

On the roof, crows leap

and land as Italian opera blares

from the cracked windows

of a tinted blue minivan.

Parched, the moon melts.

She’d give anything for a drop.

6.

Alone in the dark, I wake

to grating cheeks.

Teeth shredding skin.

I suck in breath, lick

my inner wound. Again

a tease of rain tugs the clouds,

pulling them toward the river.

On the floor, a trail of smoked almonds

freezes en route to the door.

Time to rise, break

my promise to the light.

I am the black sheep in the eye of a cloud.

7.

There is no escape.

Lying here,

I conjure words for beautiful things:

Magnolia, that fragrant mother,

golden virgins dressed in dewy lace,

sips of summery sprigs of mint.

Don’t blame me.

I haven’t lived long enough to learn

a new language.

We’re all running out.

When god reaches down

to me, a hard rain.

It was the fire that started it.

We were only its tenders, sent

to keep it alive. Nights, we feasted

on its warmth, drinking up the light—

blind to the darkness to come. They told us

the hearth is the heart where the burning lives,

and I wondered then, did we have enough

to burn? There were days,

of course, once the babies came,

no time to chop & stack the wood.

And days of lack, when, frantic to keep it

alive, I’d wildly forage for kindling: dried

leaves, old photographs, my fingers

threading for loose strands of hair. Once

I hammered a tool to keep things alight,

but instead, you found others—

carved from crooked woods, or painted

black to fool the eye. Now the dying

crackle sizzles low. Quite a hollow hush

when there’s nothing left to say,

and the sun has finally sunk,

too heavy for the cracking sky,

and the embers begin to shut their eyes—

tempted into ash.

after “At Eternity’s Gate”

Only an artist would notice the light—

which way the flame flickers

left alone in a darkened room.

Deny it if you like, but

there are places in this world

where sunlight never speaks. Still,

I had days of warmth,

standing among those fields of tall saints,

eyes locked with the divine.

Days draped in amber so pure,

night would send a fever of stars

searching for its glow.

But not here.

Not this.

I did the best that I could. Most days,

I was a beggar. In the end,

I think God will paint me

golden—a star

stumbling through creation,

yellow light on yellow walls.