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.
