^{“Let’s start the story backwards—” –Doechii}

Like anyone with an imagination, I grieve
the infinite          me, a multiverse
of self thrust through space dust,

& I’ve survived

one drowning—lifted from the deep
by strange hands, sopping
air into my water-wrung lungs

            while a different Diamond
            in a different time
            kept sinking—

I am sorry

          that I have lived

through three car wrecks, two surgeries, & my own hand
capped on an oversized bottle of pain
meds                    which means, I owe

another apology. To you, as in the other me,
forced to feed each pip down your longing.

I was too glad to tuck each sun like a clementine in my pocket.

              & I still don’t know what it means to leave

a legacy of sputum,
or to nestle each night
in a catacomb, & lo!

on our multiverse sisters
who surely guarded Mama as she cried
in her closet, cornered by a cemetery of shoes—let Mercy

be a GOD who listens:

let me die
the way Grandma died: stroked out, stoked
on eucharistic commitments to

              me— no, you— a fantasy far
& hip-deep in daffodils, sunlight dribbling
down our chin:

the survivor
            left to pry these dream songs
                           from the honeysuckle sky—

             promise you’ll hold me

             like a long, needful breath
 

then turn me loose.