I stumbled out, blinded on the front
porch step in the first sterile daytime.
The air was perfumed in aldehydes,
sparkling scents the mind can’t read
as anything like ringing in your ears.
There are no flags at half-mast, crashing
into the poles they call home somewhere
just past the hole in you. It’s a trick
of the mind, all of which you cannot
understand is white noise to you now.
But the light seems scared of us, tracing
its fingers down the sight of you, your
bare skin, my bare lack. Like a kettle
boiling over, I hear things differently.
Everywhere I look, the world is waking:
the undergrowth lost its shadow and cicadas
are hanging up dead skin like fresh laundry.
Around the reservoir, I pick a bouquet
of weeds and hold the brambles to my chest
to nurse on the feeling. The bees don’t need
saving anymore and neither do we. I’ve
accepted this lot, come salt or crying.