We’re This and We’re That, Aren’t We?
Now that the theoretical physicist slash cosmologist
has explained to me, has laid out in clean
even rows of logic
how every atom in my body
arrived from a star, a star
that blasted apart,
and the atoms of my left hand
originated from a different sun
than my right,
I can shine. I can go dark
recalling how my grandfather made
the vertical blinds rattle
when he shoved
my grandmother into them.
Startled in the yard, I turned to that sound,
from the flower bed my eyes were held by
the swaying blinds. It took a while for each
to line up
perfectly straight again, to tell myself
she slipped. Only then could I
return to stalking the butterflies.
My right hand was quick: reach and pinch.
I had so many soft wings that summer
between my thumb and index, so many of them
skewered on cactus needles.
I was a kid. I was cruel slash gentle.
He was cruel slash gentle.
He had witnessed my destroying
and I saw
across his creased face
empathy for them.
After his scolding I placed one dead one
inside the white envelope of a flower.
Under the sun it glowed. Under the moon,
more glowing.
Source: Poetry (February 2016)