Dear Mary,
The moment I step outside the apartment, the grass smears verdant. Through the canopy,
dappled sunlight blooms into dandelion patches, the tufts waiting patiently
for the children in the schoolyard to notice how fiercely round they’ve become
in the clover-filled days after a season of rain. How I miss searching for luck & minnows
in the meadows, counting tails & leaves. I didn’t want to write to you today. I wanted
to sop up the the northern sun, let my skin become a place of safekeeping,
but there is a tree pushing its roots through the concrete from its angle on the easement,
like the trees that cleave through cemeteries, ravaging gravesites in their search
for nutrients & water. Like how the Colorado river started slow, dripping off the plateau,
before slicing a groove in Arizona that expanded into a canyon. Yes, I’ve seen it,
with my own two eyes. Felt how small I am in the grand scheme of things. If we believe
the law of conservation of matter, these pages & I will return to mother nature,
fed back & broken down into ashes & ashes & dust & dust
& atoms & atoms & love & love.
See, a woman wrote an article for a magazine naming her assault
‘a soul death’ & I couldn’t stop thinking about the years I’ve spent living
in the afterlife.
This isn’t a poem
about resurrection or redemption or hell or purgatory. See, the clockfaces
are turning towards the sun, & the solstice is near passing. Heat,
a saltlick sliding down the crest of my neck,
& a world left to praise.
