April 2020
unable to sleep, i stare at blue light
late into the night—death tolls, ransacked shelves,
bleeding maps. poison, but also remedy—
abby’s message about violets & morels in her yard,
your photo of a home altar: red cloth
holding oak cross, water & flame, dried lavender,
cedar, a rosary of small moons. i think of your craving
for touch & ask the moonlight to brush fingers
through your hair in seattle. soak you in glowing
until you drip with it. somehow, mom, the days keep
breaking. spring is a myth every year
until it unfurls. still, my body is a molting tree—
at the slightest wind i flake shards of myself
to the dirt, falling a hundred times over. instead of working,
i read about microbial life surviving in frozen lava
beneath the ocean floor. inside microscopic fissures
& the pressure of atmospheres, the cells shiver,
alive. i gaze at van gogh paintings
on the met website. the full image shows a fused
landscape, but mom, in the close-ups, the scene
shatters. iridescent movement blooms in wet ribbons,
writhing like fish. i can witness each reckless flight
of the artist’s hand, rendering cypress & wheat
from tangled ochre, titanium, ultramarine. all is illuminated:
the anguish of his gestures, the quivering gashes of darkness
where time has fractured the strokes. why does beauty
make me ache? the brushstrokes sing & grate
against my bones. mom, i saw your bird again
today. i believe you sent it from cherry-blossomed streets
lined with boarded-up windows. on a branch outside
my room, a black-capped chickadee’s two-note song
bends down as though to mourn, as though in prayer.
