WEBVTT

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"Wednesday Night Interlude."

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I reach for love as
often as the door.

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I grab the past,
tomorrow, or whatever

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else lives above and behind me,
preposition not in my hands.

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I clench my fingers into
the soil at weed roots,

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remember what power I have,
and am reminded what I do not.

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I cannot touch ghosts or God,
though I feel their weight

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the same, their weight the
same for twilight to speak.

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See, my father's
throat collapsed

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before his voice became memory.

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And now I dream of familiar
ghosts, unsure which is him,

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unsure which smile
is mine to claim.

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I know they aren't me,
but they belong to me.

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Like how one time, I saw
a body rotted by a Glock,

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like fruit left in the sun.

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How the homie said, "That
could have been either of us."

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And how I've been exfoliating my
skin and poking at bruises ever

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since, scrubbing all that
blood up to the surface,

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trying to imagine my body become
a painful myth, indistinct,

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something that could
have been but wasn't.

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There's terror under my
glamor, tender muscles

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beneath my tenderness.

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I started saying, "I
love you" to my homies,

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holding them longer than we
allowed ourselves as boys,

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until our breath makes
us big the way it

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makes us older and more
desperate, more worthy

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of celebration.

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We are here, come
from so many dead.

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How could we ever be lonely?

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That poem makes me cry.

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I'm sorry.

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Mm.