It’s graceless
the way I’m always shifting.

I stole a teacher’s book of poetry once,
pages dog-eared and marked up,
I thought it’d help me understand.
I haven’t touched it since that June.

One perfect summer--
I spent the first two weeks of it back in the halls of a convent.
I know my Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s,
nothing else. What is hubris?
2 years doesn’t get you far in any doctrine
unless you’re desperate.

You were the first and last perfect anything,
since lost in nebulous transitions.

“Why are people in the subway always in such a hurry?”
Said a girl who left her purse open in a crowd once.

Always trying to putty in voids,
selfish fingers sewing up breaks,
pulling out stitches before they’re healed;
Wanting to feel that scar later—hear the click between ligaments.
I can pop my jaw. It might fall out some day.
Juggle pride with martyrdom carefully.

This is the first honest poem I’ve ever written.
It's hard to know what to say,
when busy gracelessly somersaulting through stretches of time.

Don’t let me disappear.