Whenever I spend the day crying, 
my friends tell me I look high. Good grief,  

they finally understand me.  
Even when the arena is empty, I thank god  

for the shots I miss. If you ever catch me  
only thanking god for the shots I make,  

remind me I’m not thanking god. Remind me  
all my prayers were answered  

the moment I started praying  
for what I already have.  

Jenny says when people ask if she’s out of the woods,  
she tells them she’ll never be out of the woods,  

says there is something lovely about the woods.  
I know how to build a survival shelter  

from fallen tree branches, packed mud,  
and pulled moss. I could survive forever  

on death alone. Wasn’t it death that taught me  
to stop measuring my lifespan by length,

but by width? Do you know how many beautiful things  
can be seen in a single second? How you can blow up

a second like a balloon and fit infinity inside of it? 
I’m infinite, I know, but I still have a measly wrinkle

collection compared to my end goal. I would love  
to be a before picture, I think, as I look in the mirror

and mistake my head for the moon. My dark  
thoughts are almost always 238,856 miles away 

from me believing them. I love this life, 
I whisper into my doctor’s stethoscope

so she can hear my heart. My heart, an heirloom
I didn’t inherit until I thought I could die.

Why did I go so long believing I owed the world
my disappointment? Why did I want to take

the world by storm when I could have taken it
by sunshine, by rosewater, by the cactus flowers

on the side of the road where I broke down?
I’m not about to waste more time

spinning stories about how much time
I’m owed, but there is a man

who is usually here, who isn’t today.  
I don’t know if he’s still alive. I just know

his wife was made of so much hope  
she looked like a firework above his chair.

Will the afterlife be harder if I remember
the people I love, or forget them?

Either way, please let me remember.

try calling it hibernation.
Imagine the darkness is a cave
in which you will be nurtured
by doing absolutely nothing.
Hibernating animals don’t even dream.
It’s okay if you can’t imagine
Spring. Sleep through the alarm
of the world. Name your hopelessness
a quiet hollow, a place you go
to heal, a den you dug,
Sweetheart, instead
of a grave.

Today my mum said she doesn’t remember
arriving at my house with a dishcloth,
doesn’t remember me telling her
my kitten stayed overnight at the vet,
that I’d be coming over to help with bills.
What she remembers is now.
She knows her memory is a ship
leaving port without permission,
her memory is a cloud she can’t hold.
When she asks, Why is everything so hard?
I say, I don’t think you’re the only one
asking that. When I say, I have trouble 
with loss, she says, We are all leaving.
She adds: I know I won’t be around
much longer. So I ask her 
what she’ll come back as? A pig, she says, 
then laughs. I tell her I can’t imagine 
seeing a pig and having to say, 
Oh, there’s my mom! She smiles 
and says, Then maybe I’ll return 
as a hummingbird. Another conversation 
in the present. Another conversation 
I will remember alone.

You held the fire in your hands.

You watched the embers burn, held the memories in your hands, held the silences, their emptiness.

You were braiding the sky with flame. You were listening for the cry.

Time was a hunger swallowing despair, desperation, and always the strange colonies of cloud overhead, time speaking in tongues.

You were driving right into the storm.

You were asleep at the wheel, or aiming your father’s gun, halting thought with your own blood.

You were childless, you were yourself a child

waiting for the muzzle’s flash and still, for the eternity of light, star in the eyes, for the simple, impossible brilliance and afterimage billowing out

as you were thrust into that secret dark where no one escapes, no one remembers,

where you’ll remain, in the end, frightened and alone, 

holding the fire in your hands.