when

when he breaks your heart, you will read everything lorrie moore ever wrote. and lydia davis. you will only cry at the happy parts.

you won't be able to stomach music at first. none of it. there will be too many sounds suggesting too much. eventually you will try to return to it ("he can't have music," you'll say out loud to yourself, wobbling across your new living room, "it doesn't belong to him.") but even the stupid songs will remind you and you'll keep shutting it off.

when he breaks you, you won't eat for 48 hours. then a week. then a month. you will be as hollow as a conch shell with the distant impossible sea inside. nobody will press their ear to your body so nobody will know.

"you're breaking our life," you'll say when he breaks it. "why are you breaking our life?" he always looked so tired, you'll remember. his memory yawns, languidly, shrugs, and putters out.

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adapted from Arthur Rimbaud's "Feasts of Hunger"

backyard poem #1

leaf-rustle and dried fern a ball sits abandoned in tall grass bleach-lit by a star

autumn seeps up from the corners of august as dried roses dirt patch flight of crows invisibly tidal

birds are who birds are meant to be

all the spirits of maple the spirits of morning of backyards telephone wire sky set belly full of living seeds

we watch them sit are patient are waiting for what to leap for summer poppy daisy hibiscus we are

moss-crawl of memories over stone seep sudden or tender

petals go brown and fall


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