Should I bring my good knife, my good dress,
my red stilettos?
Is this covered by insurance?
Sometimes you can’t sew the bones back together. My father knows
how to hold a heart in his hands. Will I ever learn life like that,
its fragile edges, its hollow thrum?
Will we get paid time off?
Did you know there’s a woman there? In that empty house? Wait
a moment– look now, do you see her? Sometimes I hear a wisp of song,
or two plates clanging together, and I think here’s woman/village/ghost.
Who will die in the alleys, the headlines, the small closets, apertured by smoke?
Was it like the spells said? Mute streets, screaming lamplights,
teeming churches? Is this how we end– empty, gasping,
starved for touch?
Will it always be this way, this world?
So bright and so small?
