By the river, I pass a pearl-white spider sack of eggs
that could not be a spider sack of eggs—
and I don’t stop
to look until I remembered her saying: Noticing shit
is how we save the world. I turned and knelt.
Two bulbing lobes, two black holes dusted
in feathers, a too-big beak, poor crushed
decapitated
body and open-ended questions
for wings. Sometimes, I feel the world turning,
and it’s okay that I can’t start my life over. Right now,
I’d like to prick my finger on this needle
mouth, allow
my left ventricle to balloon
blood through a puncture wound. That’s how
I want to say: I’m sorry and thank you and sweet
angel, we don’t know how to stop failing you and
failing you
and failing you and there is a future where
you and I become the same water.
