^{for Renee Nicole Good
          1988–2026}

The fall is the crashing, a sudden brightness,
call it a snapping twig on a broken tree,
call it the never fulfilled promises of freedom
                        of returning what was stolen.

Popping is what I remember from being trained
in subzero mid-winter, boy soldier boy
studying the sickness of projectiles sent into flesh,
the popping that excites the sick nerves
of men who order us to shoot, men who forget
their own sickness to call it courage.

What of the word used so often, what
of that tender softness her children will not hear
in the moment, who will have to trust memories
and stories of her saying it’s okay, I love you

                        —like Tupac resisting

she now breathing forgiveness to her murderer.

            What of the wind’s song in the crashing
of an empire, the way it cracks with howling shrillness,
insane with fear of a colonial ending, turning
in the air to see its one blood-filled eye being put out
now ...

            here where a poet names this moment
            for what it is, another crackling flame,
            in the wall of fire, not yet an apocalypse,

but the calculus of fools.

^{January 11, 2026}