ask me about the radiant hat
moon makes for that cloud face an hour before dawn

ask me about sitting on gravel staring through a playground fence
waiting like a godless monk for my mother to arrive

ask me how my hands trembled squeezing the knife
that cut me & drew new lines on stranger skin than mine

ask me about fidelity whether high or in-
how bodies in darkness cling to forgotten music

ask me why she put the cat out before she closed the door
ask me why I stayed ask me ask

ask also about softness &
how easy it is to name those better times

ask me why beautiful moments rob entire days of their despair
or why truth may be painful but it’s never personal

ask me what I did to deserve this &
what I did not do when the corner choir sang its shadows

ask me if & when & who the great who-done-it
it was I in the study with a candlestick

ask me nothing & I will wish no honest words
like forgiveness to be muttered in the dark

 

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 16, Issue 2.

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