​

The mind's black kettle hisses its wild

exigencies at every turn: The hour before the coffee

and the hour after.

​

Penscratch of the gone morning, woman

a pitched hysteria watching the mad-ant scramble,

her small wants devouring.

​

Her binge and skin-thrall.

Her old selves being shuffled off into labyrinths,

this birdless sky a longing.

​

Her moth-mouth rabble unfacing these

touch-and-go months under winter, torn letters

under floorboards,

​

each fickle moon pecked through with doubt.

And one spoiled onion. Pale Cyclops

on her kitchen counter

​

now sprouting green missives,

some act of contrition; neighbor-god's vacuum

a loud rule thrown down.

​

Her mother now on the line saying too much.

This island is not a martyr. You tinker too much

with each gaunt memory, your youth

​

and its unweeding. Not everything blooms here

a private history—consider this immutable. Consider

our galloping sun, its life.

​

Your starved homesickness. The paper wasp kingdom

you set fire to, watched for days until it burnt a city in you.

Until a family your hands could not save

​

became the hurricane. How love is still unrooting you.

And how to grow a new body—to let each word be the wild rain

swallowed pure like an antidote.

​

Her mother at the airport saying don't come back.

Love your landlocked city. Money. Buy a coat.

And even exile can be glamorous.

​

Some nights she calls across the deaf ocean to no one

in particular. No answer. Her heart's double-vault

a muted hydra.

​

This hour a purge

​

of its own unselfing

She must make a home of it.

 

 

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