Waste

Everything that was young went quickly,

the way his eyes met mine as soon as we

woke together in a room outside Nanjing,

feeling as if all the things that were falling

would fall and make their thunder, leave

us with the challenge of being happy,

all the things that felt given when gifts

were not just surprises, but what we

knew, what we hoped to take with us

to heaven, unbound by faults and sins,

not deceived the way we were when

the end came to what we knew of China,

landing me here. I am a wish in the skies

spun out from celestial space to be poor,

to be covered with black skin, a felt

quilt of a map with only one way to China — 

through pain as big as hogs squealing

at killing time on black farms in Alabama — 

the noise of death, the shrill needle

that turns clouds over to rip the air

above the cities where people are young

and all that is given is never taken away.