Where I Am Not

I ask the new migrant if he regrets leaving Russia.

We have dispensed already with my ancestry.

He says no. For a time, he was depressed. He found

with every return he missed what he left behind.

A constant state of this. Better to love by far

where you are. He taps the steering wheel of his car,

the hum of the engine an imperceptible tremble

in us. When he isn’t driving, he works tending

to new trees. I’ve seen these saplings popping

up all over the suburbs, tickling the bellies

of bridges, the new rooted darlings of the State.

The council spent a quarter mil on them &

someone, he—Lilian—must ensure the dirt

holds. Gentrification is climate-friendly now.

I laugh and he laughs, and we eat the distance

between histories. He checks on his buds daily.

Are they okay? They are okay. They do not need

him, but he speaks, and they listen or at least

shake a leaf. What a world where you can live off

land by loving it. If only we cared for each other

this way. The council cares for their investment.

The late greenery, that is, not Lilian, who shares

his ride on the side. I wonder what it would cost 

to have men be tender to me regularly, 

to be folded into his burly, to be left on the side

of the road as he drove away, exhausted. Even

my dreams of tenderness involve being used

& I’m not sure who to blame: colonialism,

capitalism, patriarchy, queerness or poetry?

Sorry, this is a commercial for the Kia Sportage

now. This is a commercial for Lilian’s thighs.

He didn’t ask for this and neither did I—how

language drapes us together, how stories tongue

each other in the back seat and the sky blurs

out of frame. There are too many agonies

to discuss here, and I am nearly returned.

He has taken me all the way back, around

the future flowering, back to where I am not,

to the homes I keep investing in as harms.

I should fill them with trees. Let the boughs

cover the remembered boy, cowering

under a mother, her raised weapon

not the cane but the shattering within,

let the green tear through the wall

paper, let life replace memory. Lilian, I left

you that day, and in the leaving, a love

followed. Isn’t that a wonder and a wound?

Tell me which it is, I confess I mistake the two.

I walk up the stairs to my old brick apartment

where the peach tree reaches for the railing,

a few blushing fruits poking through the bars,

eager to brush my leg, to say linger, halt.

I want to stop, to hold it for real, just once

but I must wait until I am safe.