To the one who begged for no more guests and carved a kitchen chair for me anyway:
I took a seat at your overturned table, legs snapped and trembling.
Licked his fingers while you stomped the dishes back to sand.
Cried in closets for three days before you asked where I’d gone.
double golden shovel with Saba and Nick HakimThere’s Earth. Amethyst. Cherries in heat. Trees drooling sugar. Midnight’s blue song. So what
heaven? That kingdom wholed by a coy god’s touch? Where green and the river began? If
all-father tells it: first you slave and shiver and shuck and die and die for heaven’s
around-back gate to budge loose at the bent speck of you. Lies. No doors, no lines. Look right:
me and mine kissed alive—greening.