thirty cigarette butts in the snow outside my window are
a constellation of my seventh grade braids,
trapped under my elbows in every armchair,
to make a dense wig for some girl
better off bald.
the winter, my warden, squints at me while i
decide to dream
not of every or any armchair, but of
my grandmother’s porch staring serenely,
crouched beside the pregnant tomatoes,
trailing its finger through heaps of soil, tracing its name in the—
you need me again
to listen to you curse and weep and swear you
won’t go inside until a flickering satellite drops on your head,
sitting on the hill with a sullen, raging satchel you forgot to pack,
slouching home before orange and black crawl into the sky.
last year’s red-shingled attic leaked, let in the melt in march,
my mattress damp, the meadow between my shoulders molded.
whenever i moved and whenever i didn’t,
(my back rigid and rusting) my shirt gaped, i shivered and sweat.
my mind, though, still remembered how to tulip.
this january, with the freeze lounging on the sills,
a creased woman with a mustache pushes a shopping cart
piled with red plants through my mother’s cathedral.
i am the silent tower bell, my stagnant tongue and bronze ear
(eternally mute, ever undeaf—to you and your satellites)
lying across two pews like a bridge to nowhere.
i pluck out my eyelashes one by one.
a man with half a mouth and an umbrella mutters, no coffee,
i’ve been wearing the same shadows for days.
