last night
while you were preparing your
ammunition, i felt you
tugging at the tips of my hair.
out of all the strings in all
the universes, ours shook with
the same vibration.

last night
while you were preparing your
self for death, i was talking
to eric (with a c) from
the suicide hotline in new
york city. he told me i am
bright and successful, i wish
he had said the same to you.

this morning
while i was swimming in trazedone
dreams of new york city, a
woman, not too far from there,
felt her womb close like a
wing. the energy and matter her
body lent to an extension of
her bloodline was returned into
the universe. it has become the
brightest star, it has bloomed from
a poppy flower bud on a rocky hillside.

this morning,
while i was deep inside the caves of
my soft synaptic clefts, a
woman risked her everything
for the breath of two young children.
somehow, in the deep wood of my
slumber, i finally forgave my vice
principle. i finally forgave the vices
of my father.

this mourning
did not begin at 9:40am, that is just
when it culminated. you cannot tell me that
you don't feel it too. the rocks falling from
the sky yesterday were an omen.
the transgendered youth taking their
own lives are an omen. the carbon becoming
the atmosphere, the oil engulfing
the salted seas, the corals dissolving
in acid baths are all a shouting omen.

when the mayans calculated
the cycle's ending, they gave us
the gift of the wheel. the nature of a
circle requires revolution, the presence of an
ending requires a beginning.

how do we honor the gift of the maya?
how do we create a cycle of light?

that pressure on your chest is a
fear that you cannot do this
alone, and i'm telling you
you can't. how lucky we are
to have each other. how lucky we are
to have a new moon, the universal connection
to all sentient beings, the snakes that
slide slowly down ancient aztec temples,
the star that rises without fail in
promise of new freedom.

how luck we are for the teachers
how lucky we are for the artists
how lucky we are for the martyrs
and murderers and storytellers
and the collective unconscious!

if every single hand picks up an ember
from this wreckage, the power of our muscles
will turn them into diamonds, the sparks
upon our fingertips will turn us into healers.

imagine what seven billion healers can cure.