for a friend
I will try
to keep this short:
your apartment
is a collection
of unlit incense
and unfinished business.
There is a
carpet stain
from your absence.
Every other cabinet
is still sectioned off
with caution tape.
Faces
like unripe fruits
pared open.
I’d say
you wreaked havoc
like a car thief totalling
a window, set us on fire
in a building with no fire
escape.
I have been thinking
about the fire escape
as metaphor:
if I brought it inside,
would it still have
collapsed? In the end,
the fingers of
your daughter
kissed
your tear troughs.
You glittered
with moon-bling…
dew. The carpet
cupped her knees.
The way the threads
held themselves
was what got to me.
She was wearing red
when my mother and I
visited with chicken broth,
some inner logic,
and the blue space
we call vacancy
in our palms.
I told her
to wait ten years —
it was a long shot,
but she would be closer
to forgetting.
This is all a sphere
that spins too fast,
so syringe it into
the frontal lobe,
make it an
impulse to stop
every time a field
contained color.
In the end, I’m not sure
how we wound
up here, unable to picture
the glimmer of mid-February
chills, like a moth caught
between mosquito screen:
window pane. This
is me dousing
my heart in marinade,
in ginger, in star anise,
for campfire kindling.
This is for
smoking myself
out of here
for your daughter,
who I could not comfort,
save, by holding her hand
and saying:
On we go
We go on
The Land Bridge 