And if you follow the line
of Orion’s arm up and to the right,
there’s a faint blur, a whole cluster
of stars that one may not have known
was there, not in all her days
of suburbia. The Pleiades, hiding
behind brighter lights
as she lays her bad back on the asphalt.
And Alcyone, the brightest of the lot,
mistaken for a dot of sleep in the periphery
of sight, lost to time.  
She is waiting for the sun to wake up,
their fingers intertwined like children’s
in a fairytale, she blinks the sleep
from her eyes as it blinks the stars
from its skies.
I guess that is you and I.

We used to play.
Climb rocks of dirt
and red clay and you would tolerate
my singing
and help me with my math.

And shout when I said "minus"
while you said "no, negative"
and I, your double
negative reckless
optimist, couldn't possibly wire up
that light switch
that you installed wrong,
couldn't read a diagram of circuits,
couldn't take a tour
of the machine shop
because just looking at the gadgets
in wonder might get my
fragile fingers
cut off.

You said trust no one,
not even someone who smiles,
not even the janitor who whistled
when he mopped the school halls.
Never get in a van, sure,
but what if that man at the airport
was just trying to get home, dad?
What if he had a daughter to see?

What if you could see me?

I bet you're glad I never learned
how to fix your cars.
Glad I left my bike at the house
so the grease doesn't get on my calves.

'I'm just trying to keep you safe.'
'Why.'

No one is ever safe,
no birds are ever free.
I have learned so much about circuitry

but even back then,
I could have gotten that switch working
if you'd just let me play.

You’ve taught me to be more
fragile than I’d like but
I could have done it because
despite what you say about trust and luck
and when a girl should give up
I will always try,
always go to the ends of the earth
to find light.

And I will show you
that you don't need to be made
of stone
to love a girl.

thirteenth north and left on third,
climb the hill,
confuse the bluebirds with the jays

and orion with aries,
a fumbling through
everything you love.

and when you've burnt it once
and can't forgive,
consider this:

the soufflé is not the soufflé
but the recipe

People cross the street
on white ladders.
The squirrel knows
that there is solid road
elsewhere.

It hops forward
ready to cut
corners and
on the move and
stops—
something light
and moving faster.

Squirrel will pause,
it will not.
People know
where to walk.

Cross over move forward
go on, go on go,
but in light
one should pause,
which squirrels,
of course, know.

In the face
of fast light,
let’s go slow.

And you think
no one will know
to put change in this cup
because it is empty.

The rain hitting
the paper of it
doesn’t sound the same
as the clinking coins of yesterday.

A child skips across
the bridge, outrunning
her raincoat, ahead of mother,
does one and then another

double take because she
does not want her raincoat
anyway, wants to feel
water bead on skin,

she falls back and takes it
from mother’s outstretched hands
and tosses it to the folded ones
of the man.

She has one pound
to spend today, mother may
I?

No.

Mother, why?

You watch her little hands
ball into fists,
her eyes cloud with mist
that melts into the rain.

You watch mother open a door,
watch a wind tunnel batter
the chandelier ornaments,
they clink like wind chimes or coins.

The child safely inside,
mother’s eyes glare back,
fear without reason,
they shout
*I want that raincoat back.

A theorem:

any map of the world
contained on a plane
of contiguous regions

needs only four colors
to prevent the bleeding
of borders.

No matter the shape,
nor how many times
a nation state

splits itself up
with all the fight
of man splitting the atom,

nor how many splinter
groups stick themselves
into the skin

of the innocent. Any four
colors, take blue for the oceans
or black for the bruise,

it’s not the borders bleeding
but the insides,
you seeking refuge

in worlds that blame you
for the men that hold the atoms
that split you.

Odds are you’ve never
seen an atlas of only four colors
because Atlas picks more,

how else to contain it all,
to keep from shouting fine
and letting the whole globe

fall.

Oh, poor atlas.

Salaam, shalom,
what we want
is all the same,
but paix,
it sounds so different.

Raw
egg whites cling
to your hands,
you won’t wash them away,
the smell of dish soap
still tastes like flinching
away from your mother
the first time you cursed
and she tried
to clean you.

The back of the bottle
says Dawn is just a base,
with a mild pH,
if swallowed, simply
dilute
by downing water.

You won’t wash your
hands by drowning.

They are still soft
from rolling dough
in sugar,
the whites retaining
everything you touch,
cinnamon and nutmeg,
cardamom and clove,

everything warm
you learned from her,
the command of the kitchen,
the heat of your skin
under her quick palm,

the heat that concentrates
in the steam
of the boiling water,

black tea,

and you burn your lip
and your mother kisses it
and you gasp in the smoke
with your chai-stained lungs
and you hug her
with your nutmeg hands
to which every spice has clung.