being the "sum of what the world 'thinks' I am"
is written, smeared in blood across the cave i've come to love
and leave behind but only in an understanding:
selfhood carries with it all we lack.
it carries on its seas the diatomic algae fruiting slowly back
it carries on each ladder-rung the selves that other's see,
the lovers' feelings felt,
the mailman's kindness kept--
a stranger's instant siblinghood in eye-flash recognition wept.

my heart is tattered there, and rebuilt here;
i could not be the beating love-train joyful as the sorrows,
the pain and lonely misery, the mind-split cosmic surd of this
that Jenkins must have felt, before her captors left hir dead...
--a bullet in hir back, a simple heart-stop pellet placed--
i could not be the beating love-train joyful as the sorrows,
without your words, your rich, kind thoughts of me
that others do not know they have,
that Kiesha could have known.