“…this voice was never mine,
nor even yours.”
—Lawrence Raab
Our world slowly spinning
unbuttons itself—
this is a difficult home.
And you, the reason for this telling
the way memory and subtraction fool us,
a sun-warmed key lime
sliced in half
its juice on your tongue.
Your husband gone
taking your child for shoes
and you, eyes closed;
falling straight to the heart of God—
the smooth slide into the back
of a cooled taxi’s leather seat.
But maybe everyone is always
almost drowning;
and maybe this is all
you want to be.
Like the mailbox as a child
I stuffed with snow,
you could not receive a thing.
Stitching back up
the blood you lose each month,
forgetting the march of happiness
down to your toes,
forgetting our world still spins
with its nature of hope.
So I ask for everything—
I don’t know where to stop.
Hands tight on a wheel
one fine turn away—
and all the ways to want things;
and all the things
we shouldn’t want.
