All My Friends Have Rent and Heartbreak
Things are bad and yet already I’ve cracked
A window, run the bath & ground the beans.
Through the window, beams run in & bathe the ground.
Sunny mornings as lonely as midnights.
Lonely mornings are just sunny midnights—
Whoever is leaving is always leaving,
Whoever’s been left has always been.
I tell everyone they did nothing wrong.
I say to anyone, “You’ve done nothing wrong!”
Today, two men fixing a power line.
Fixed, a line carries power two ways:
I sit & the bath warms the coffee,
I sit & the coffee warms the bath.
Things are bad. We’ve cracked. And yet —
Facilities Should Restrict Visitation of All Visitors,
Except for Certain Compassionate Care Situations
We sat still & straight so long that wakeful
Autumn (mouths masked, death on all our minds)—
(In the mouth of Autumn, death is what we mind)—
We felt the chill of the first frosted morning.
We felt the chill before we felt the morning,
Like my grandma woke before my mom’s water
broke. Like my grandma knew before my mom: I was almost home. She stayed close and ready.
Now she’s close to ready, making her way home;
Mom has dreams of water gushing through the house.
Mom has dreams of water. Meanwhile, in the house,
I’ve been sleeping one floor underneath.
Or, one floor underneath my un-slept mother,
I’ve been sitting still. Straight & long. Awake.