WEBVTT

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This one is called
"Explaining Sadness."

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For my birthday,
Scott brought me

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a boomerang. He found
it in an alley,

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and I tucked it into my
belt, strutted around the bar

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until they kicked me out for
having a weapon in my pants.

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At home, I hung it on the wall,
thought of the little girl who

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might have thrown it, sitting
at the window every night,

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waiting for it to
return like her father,

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who told her before leaving
that accidents only happened

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to the careless and ignorant.

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I once slammed my sister's
finger in the car door.

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Maybe I meant to.

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During last month's
storm, an oak

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fell into our high school
English teacher's living room.

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No one pointed a
finger at the tree.

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A neighbor told his
daughter the tree got tired

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and needed to lie down.

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That night, she dreamed
of being knocked over

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and not getting back up, but
being swallowed into the Earth.

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I miss the hills of
the graveyard, swollen

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with gravestones
that were never made

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because the families of the
dead couldn't afford them.

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I say this to my
mother, and I know

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there's nothing to do but pace
the room until I have caught up

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with my shadow.

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And the feedback on
the phone is the sound

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of my first girlfriend
singing in the shower.

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Tonight I'll take
any distraction.

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I'll listen for
any creature that

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cries because of the sunset,
to any drop of water that

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thinks it's independent enough
to leave its mother in search

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of the river.

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We make our own canyons if
we drag our feet long enough.

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And if we refuse to move and
are impaired by depression,

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death sneaks up on
its four spindly legs

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and rips us from our body like
a sheet of notebook paper.

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Little girl, we know each other
only by this chunk of wood,

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but I still imagine you
waking, your hair folded

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over your shoulders
like the wings of bats,

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crying because you are afraid
of the future, its toenails

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growing beneath your bed.

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If we ever meet, I'll
confess that I've

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been having the same dream
for the last 10 years.

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A friend falls asleep and has
a seizure, chokes on his vomit.

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His mother holds my hand.

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That drop of water makes
its way to the ocean,

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leaves its trail on the beaches
of Sierra Leone and Koidu,

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where the rain is good
luck, and the amputees

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walk with their heads down to
find the diamonds in the mud.

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