All of my pain is a spider 
I’ve learned not to crush 
with the heel of my shoe 

but to guide with a page 
of my journal 
into an empty glass. 

I ask questions about 
its life, its purpose 
as I walk careful 

out to the garden and rest 
it down on the earth. 
My pain—how happy 

it is to leave me 
whenever I treat it 
kind. 

I wasn’t, by any means, a natural.
Was not one of those wow-hounds
born jaw-dropped. I was tough in the husk.
Went years untouched by rain. Took shelter
seriously, even and often especially
in good weather, my tears like teenagers
hiding under the hoods of my eyes,
so committed they were to never falling
for the joke of astonishment.

When I was told there were seven
wonders of the world, I trusted the math,
believed I had seen none of them.
Of course beauty hunted me.
It hunts everyone. But I outran it, hid
in worry, regret, the promise of an afterlife
or a week’s end.

Then one day, in a red velvet theater
in New Orleans, I watched Maya Angelou
walk on stage. Seventeen slow steps to the mic.
She took a breath before speaking,
and I could hear god being born in that breath.
My every pore reached out like a hand
pointing to the first unsinkable lotus
in the bayou of the universe.
I’d never felt anything like it.
Searched the encyclopedia
for the feeling’s name when I got home:

                        “Goosebumps.”

Afterwards, I thought—I can do this.
Started training morning to night,
tore the caution tape off my life
and let everything touch it.

Allen Iverson on the television
in his first season with the Sixers,
crossover sharp as a V of sparrows
Flying through the paint like Michelangelo’s brush:
272 goosebumps.

My baby sister, sober for the first time
in thirteen years, calling to tell me
she just noticed our mother’s eyes are green:
505 goosebumps.

One day, my friend scored tickets
to a Prince concert. Tiny venue.
I was right behind the sound booth.
Prince’s entire band that evening—women.
At the end of the show the person
turned around and whispered,  He didn’t play
one song on his setlist the whole night.

I live on stages. I know what it is
to scratch a plan, but not the whole trip
and still arrive to your destination
two hundred years before your time:
421 (artist formerly known as) goosebumps.

But that’s just the fancy stuff.
Some of them came from simple facts—
It rains diamonds on Jupiter.
Blood donors in Sweden receive a thank you
message when their blood is used.

One night in Michigan, my friend,
still undiagnosed, could not uncurl
her fingers to strum her guitar,
so she sang the chords instead.
It was the first time in my life I’d seen pain
become an instrument:
10 dozen goosebumps
for each and every note plucked up from
the string section of her refusal to silence
her dream.

After that, nothing in the world was gray.
Even the movie of my past was released
in color. The oldest man in my hometown
could not get to the door to listen
to our carols so we went inside and sang
at his bedside instead. Twenty-four boots
on the front step catching snowflakes
with their tongues: 776 goosebumps.

At one point everything started doing it:
A sincere apology, an enemy’s love poem.
The moon rising over the continental divide.
My love and I thought it was a car
driving off a cliff, and suddenly
nothing in the world was dying.
You ever felt that? A split second
when nothing in the world is dying?
888 goosebumps, and the next day
I sharpened a tiny ax
so I could split the seconds myself.
Too much lives in a moment
to not feed it to the fire in the heart, slow.

A Missoula treehouse filled with candlelight.
The octopus documentary.
The biggest dog in the shelter
hiding behind a teacup chihuahua,
and the woman who came to adopt a cat
taking all three of them home.

Me, at home, two months into chemotherapy
watching all of my eyelashes fall onto my cheekbones
and realizing that was 400 wishes
I wouldn’t have made otherwise.

There is no escaping
the magic now. Beauty caught me
and never let me go.
And the thing about the world record
is—if someone breaks it after me,
and they will break it after me,
I will love that so much
that without even trying,
I’ll break it again.

My mama got a sugarcane smile
Southern sweetened iced tea hint
of lemon in her kiss—my mama
loved me like home cooked meals

Slow roasted conversations left overs
in the corners of my mind like I remember
she gave me Cheese Curls like teething rings
to place between my gums and satisfy crying

She Twizzler twisted my thick hair
with globs of blue magic—make me Sunday-fresh
My skin hot fudge, she caramel at best
My mama—corn bread and cola,

Candied yams and cabbage, banana pudding and cobbler
Food so good on the taste buds—make her feet swell
She wobble sometimes like pendulums
on grandma’s clock that do tell time.

Learned it from all the times great gran
was cooking for church’s second service
Learned to praise God through baked
mac and cheese and pray my daddy come home

from the service, but he dead and gone now
and my mama in combat mode — her body
covered with infections like chocolate coated
candy. Sugar level–501–which is to say
she got stroke caught in between her teeth

A1C, 14, veins constricting then collapsing
like salivating glands when you taste that cheesecake
that’s too rich and saccharine
My mama so sweet its sickening

They had to cut cyst out of her breast
like she had cavities within her chest
and I’m scared that if she don’t water down
the syrup in her spirit they will amputate
her limbs and ligaments leaving her bitter
to the taste—all sour in the face
where salty tears replace the stars that twinkle
and burst in my mama’s iris, my mom is

hot cocoa when my soul grows cold from all the pain
in the world, all gummy bear dimples and a heart
made of pecan swirls. My mama got a crockpot-type-hug
that fills the house with aroma. My mama fills me up

every time I’m around her. My mama is a recipe passed down
through generations and I just pray my children will have full plates
before she is called to grace—Amen. Pray her eyes will not be candy
wrapper shut before she ever has a chance to meet them.

But my mama be stubborn like Jawbreakers sometimes
So I make pools of apologies hoping she will forgive
me enough to take care of herself, but this aint no candyland-
child’s play and though disease is hard for anyone to swallow
this aint no sugar pill placebo cuz we know diabetes won’t just go away

And still my mama be like Baby everything gon’ be ok
My mama with her smile made of sugarcane
as I can’t help but fear the decay.