I am used to feeling broken.
I have been through things.
Your ashes spilled onto my shoe.
Ashes, Ashes —
In my closet, the ashes of my brother.
Rosy Doyle’s ashes in my closet.
The post man brings your ashes to my door.
He rings the bell.
I sign to receive what is left of your body.
Your ashes —
My oldest brother’s ashes on my dining room table.
I tell you, I have been through things.
Sometimes memory is a lot like rust.
I have spent nights on a tar roof waiting for stars to fall.
I pretend to be brave.
I like being different.
When I was younger I fell in love
with the idea of kissing him.
My fear refuses to let my mind be honest.
My heart fears to release.
I tell you, the truth I understand is too vibrant.
These three things I trust —
But I don’t trust enough to tell you
what three things they are.
Color on canvas is like separations of me from me.
Only better than.
I love that a poem need not have meaning.
I won’t explain.
— I keep waiting for some old wounds to shape shift into scars.
I love sparklers and the evening star.
Silence and the dictionary.
Sometimes I settle for fragments.
Someone asked me this: are you valuable?
I think I said too quickly — no.
I don’t journal —
It never was what he said
but rather how he looked at me.
We were not about language —-
His eyes told me all I needed to hear.
