Isn’t it hard to see light’s bearing
against the wall? The animals know where heat
is going. All I care about is holding a story
in my hands. The square, the smell,
the movement. When I fly my throat into a morning,
the lint molts off in ceaseless presents. No witch,
no word, that’s how dull the smoke was, two stories
up, holding my head above my foot. Isn’t saying
Now hard? The after of the stain
becomes juice, or medicine, and the sun is like the sun
in a movie, how it slants across the bed.
Copyright © 2025 by Anne Marie Rooney. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 3, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
