You Look Like I Feel

Dirt on my chin and I wonder: am I already

in the ground? Like a toy turned real, I cannot shed

the sense that I have died. The German word

for Heaven’s the same

as the German word for sky. On hearing a cruel

prince was in danger, I prayed for him to thrive,

not for his own sake, but for the concubines,

sure to end up buried

along. To my real face, a man once crowed

i ruined you, and though he did, the joke’s

on him: he ruined me only for this world,

and this world is not long

for itself. The Earth, that ever-loving

but distrustful kin, keeps leaving us just a little

pocket money when it dies, never the land —