May 28, 2024

we are trying to tell each other things

about what hurts or why we wake in the morning with trouble in our eyes.
We gesture toward a broken plate, a mug of cold tea, weeds—as if this
speaks to the curio cabinet opening inside us, dusty baubles spilling out.
Sometimes, we choose absence for our tongues, hold a blank piece of paper
to the phone. Elsewhere, we rake boots on a bedroom rug, flick cigarettes of
conversation toward the center table, season our smiles with ash. How 
can we write the letters stinging our fingertips? How do we unlatch 
the mailbox bearing each lung-grief, each rib-hunger, the pen of our losses
blueing the margins? We are, perhaps, still unknown to ourselves, and this 
we must forgive—our great incoherence—face each other with empty hands.