After and for Molly Brodak
People are wild and small and don’t live very long.
The first to die are the ones who don’t tell stories:
mouse masks and leaky chamber pots and pine
straw and red embroidery and the ugly song
a crow teaches her son so he can sleep.
They tilt their dark half dome eyes up for hawks:
the sky is open all the way; workers upright
on the line like spokes. Impossible dreams –
like building a birdhouse underwater. Dark pasts
are only good at coming back. Each day ahead
is lake black. The holy lies between things.
You hope you are remembering something
when you see it. Come back from there. If there is
no one else here. I’m not either. Half of me feels
strangled, a hard curve in a dirt road. I can’t see
ahead. The last time I saw myself alive, I drew
the curtain back from the bed, stood by my sleeping
body. You will save yourself. You cannot help it.