When you were born some way,
packed together beneath warm earth
and birthed on shears of mountain,
or else frozen atop chopped waves-
they weren’t alive.
Your porous sky, marred deep,
sits atop lacerations which cut into the dirt
and slices open its skin.
Mantle solid, others finger your etchings,
whisper between the humming breaths of God,
breathe in and their lungs fill with
brown arid landscape, choking dehydrated dandelion fluff.
Here: when all is bruised
and dizzy starlight flirts with the moon,
death is an American flag strung below your cross, so
Jesus can find them.
The Shema kisses sweaty tears that leave
their necks heavy.
Dashes, degrees, un-mowed burnt weeds, and
Christ, what’s the point?
Epigraph: Broken, cracked, the bane of their existence
kept me alive when you whispered in my palm
“I’ll be seeing you.”