2024

What do you want to say

to a year yet to explain itself?

The days are heaving,

the hours a diary made meaningful

with our ghosts: gray, tenuous,

prone to our forgetting.

Just tell me something new.

Or describe to me freedom

as an animal. Show me skin

moistened by worship,

waterfalls like pathways

to the skies, or a cathedral

of mangroves thick with hope

of the last known faithful.

My prayer is my entire world

because this is what it means

to live. When you hear me

with few to no words to say,

it is because I still wish

to be in awe of what

I am about to witness.

You Cannot Change That

I will say this

and more: What you

are most willing

to sacrifice for peace

a river could do better.

That mountain with

the last primate of its kind,

that’s mercy no soul

could ever question.

You cannot change that.

You should not change

that. Consider the knife

with its whetted edge,

how it cuts only with

force. You have limits

and your arms can only

reach this much, heart

the size of a teacup

can only hold this much.

Yes, not the hand

overworked, underloved.

Save this vessel

as a note that you

could’ve been kinder.

To strays, to stay

when everybody else

leaves. I will say this

and a little bit more:

You are not alone,

and it could’ve not

been more perfect.

You are born with softness,

and the world—

not you, not anyone—

can take a breath

with your song of bearing

this gift into old age. Say

how big do you want

to be in the growing

smallness of every day?

When will you stop

asking for more?

Poreuomai

Each day we lose

a country in the name

of all that is sacred

and there is a war

that keeps changing

our words for loss.

Does it mean the skewed

frozen face of an infant

caked in dust? Or the light

show in the skies

that terrifies even

the darkest corners

of the earth? Nothing’s

ever enough—adamancy,

each of our own true norths,

this journey, this prophecy.

Say peace will find us a way

to remedy the rifts in the air

and on the ground,

craters the size of cities,

but we may not like it.

We will lean, though,

on felled trees like family,

on what remains.

When everything looks

right again, we will think of

what inspired the discovery

of fire, what resides in a heart

that persists, and if we are

honest enough, what is cruel

in the eyes of a loving god.