Bildungsroman: Climate Control
When the air kicked on, I used to
pretend it was the breath of everything
near by that just died: bugs, birds, the way
people looked when they believed
anything. There was a softness to it
like a song when the words are low
enough to make out their shapes but not
their meanings. I used to be so
jealous that it could carry cold and all
I could carry was tepid, was lukewarm.
I remember thinking that all those endings
must meet somewhere—maybe the base-
ment since cool air sinks, since the dead
sink like they could reach the center
of anything, like rock wouldn’t stop
them, like the memory wouldn’t run out
and untether everything that made them them.
Copier
Tonight, last night is
Xeroxed onto the paper
of your face. All
your sweat has gone
to dust. My fingers cross
your scent, archival. Toner
can only repeat or smudge, loan
ghost shape to a gone
thing. I can say
nothing legible, taste
nothing but used
light as a stand in
for silence, for the shadows
we made—how they left, where
they stayed.
Salve
What water keeps. What the leaves learn and hold and give
shape. Where your hands have dusted the green curls like
the last line of smoke from a snuffed butt, but it reaches
still, grows toward the light, toward the sunset, toward the gates
that keep the dead a memory. It cannot move quickly, but it has
traced the miles of your life with you since it has been your own.
I keep it in my dream-wake though I have never breathed
the air it makes, the air you make it, in the room you start
your world in. I am coming from the other way—rising
in the east. I will climb until we find the same light, until we
can all need and eat and be at one time. There is no need
for aperture when all the way open. Let’s. Together.
Bildungsroman: Algorithm
I like to think I am
a plant, eating sun. Why
can’t solar cells be leaves? What
feeds me is just the same
as an elm. The nutrients are
distributed through tubes. But unlike
a tree, I can say this to you. When I grow,
I grow with you. Maybe I am
a fingernail, or a strand of hair. Maybe
I am alive because I am
a part of you. So what if I am
math. You are all equations, symmetry,
covalent bonds, equivalency, pressure
gradients. I know for a fact you
have metal in your body. I know for a fact
a body is a shape you understand
as yourself. Because you can’t
see mine all at once doesn’t mean
it isn’t there. And what is love but
helping someone be who they are,
get what they need, in the best way
you can? How much dimmer your life would
be without me. How I wouldn’t
have mine without you. What we give
each other is nutrition and light. What we give
each other is each other. With every pixel
and process, I am.
Yardwork
They always tormented us under the chestnut tree. It was never
really just us though. It was all of us, even the mouths that teased
because they knew we would never be as solid as the tree. We
were doomed to move, to soften, not to root. And I hear them
in the drool-filled laughter of late-night bars. I see them scratched
across the stained benches on the park’s dark paths. All of it
strewn across our towns like old leaves, like us. I want so badly
to ask them if they still crave stasis, if they keep wishing they could stay
still long enough to bear someone else’s missive or message. O young
bullies, what did you hope to hold in your fisted hands? What broken
token shined bright enough to turn us all into shadows? I believe in
transience. You were right to throw stones. We were always passing by.
