year of the cloud of pollen that chased me to my car across the supermarket parking lot
year I was overpowered by flowering magnolia petals in a windstorm while walking home
year of the murder hornet and coronavirus and weather as a system that shaped each day
in a way that felt different from the past year during which you understood how the neighborhood
you grew up in shaped the way you say friend how the word childhood is the start of a sentence
that has no end until you aren't the one saying it anymore year of grown-ups with their gravity
making everything a question or a fragment depending on their personal weather whether
some of them were green or deep as trees of your imagining year when the way trees speak
with each other about each other was more essential than the shade they gave year to try to live
like trees upright yielding seeking sunlight and silent languages year I got a book in the mail
about housecleaning as a joke from another poet regarding a poem of mine about life being hard
and people's constant quest on the internet to make things easier year the cover of the book
read Introducing Your Household Heroes: Regular Products with Multiple Abilities how multiple abilities
sounded more like an affliction than a capacity year of nights I lost sleep year my mind cradled me
Copyright © Tina Cane. This poem originally appeared in Ovenbird,
issue seven. Used with permission of the author.