i.
i always find a space for myself
in small places:

ii.
in my mother's open wounds,
there i dance with salt and lime
and my father's misplaced angers.

iii.
in the scratched frames
under the nails of an angry girl.
in between cowering sunbeams
i lick the walls clean of dust.

iv.
in the fifth page of thrifted book,
back when i was in love with bukowski,
i look at the stains of a summer day sin
and see a five-feet
egyptian sarcophagus taped with figures;
what is the hieroglyph for pity,
so that hathor takes me back to the tight spaces of her womb?
what is the hieroglyph for homelessness?
what is the hieroglyph for misplaced?

v.
i always find a space for myself
in small places:
in the holes of a tire,
in between discolored knuckles,
in desperate places where a body gives up
and wastes away;
there's a space for one more.

vi.
i always find a space for myself
in small places — they wait with such quiet patience
like a father to a prodigal child —
i always find a space for myself
waiting in small places,
it calls hauntingly, like a well-loved, familiar ghost.

yet i cannot come back.

i am too huge with sorrows now —
too full with wistful human bones.