I knock on doors
that refract light
as sketched shapes of hope.
That chimera of real and illusion.

I remember that in hospitals,
maternity wards and hospice,
doors are to be opened and shut
with gloved hands,
elbows or leaning hips.

I hold myself to a few words:
I needed to go
and so I do,
"one-step at a time,"
when fortitude warms the path
And otherwise,
I remember a red light in the dark
at 6 am in February,
chortling engine
with two hundred miles to traverse -
I was sleepy and restless
and beneath my hums on coffee breath
a seed sprouted
barbs and blossoms.

I doubled down on heartbreak
and the fertility of schisms,
because the world is shaped
by twisting plates that ****** and slide
into one another in dumb collision,
and for all we glean of how,
it may as well be on stone rafts of fate
we built our hopes.