Some Pink in Your Color

Did you know I’m in this hospital bed?

I’m not. I’m in the same light you stand in,

much the same way I’m in the waist of your Carolina

watching from the screen across the bed

whose pulse is worn down with an IV to the head.

We are all snow birds atop

the cherry blossoms of August.

Springtime in Washington D.C.

passed too fast, nearly in the flash of Rose

brushing her teeth over the bedpan.

No adrenal gland has known such cortisol,

such heartbreaking I love you O my God,

so many soldiers on the brink of their lives returning!

Are we still talking to the same god?

I can’t imagine the heart anymore

now that it presses my ribs apart,

a balloon of such gravity I ache for stars in a jar,

wasps whose love reminds me of fireflies tonight.

Source: I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press, 2011)