Every Atom

We are built for breaking. We know this
and yet still more babies are born
with their soft skulls and hunger.
What word can stop a bullet?

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now

It is an equation without solution,
this endless subtraction. Nota pit. Not
a vacuum. What do you call a vessel
that is broken, and the pieces scattered?

Swallowing cold river stones, one
by one, until they click and slick
together in the hollow of my body.
I think by now I must be thick

with it, this fear, but no, it whittles.

Then we dreamt we had forgiven our-
selves. Car wrecks and divorces. Shiny
bridesmaid dresses. Filched cigarettes.

Then we began to draw maps to outlying
cities. We made friend with wolves and
long-distance truckers. Our hair grew long.

Then there was the hour we just watched
the sun elbow its way across the hospital floor.
Shadows began to finally mean something.

Then even though we closed our eyes
we could still see how disappointment
had become a church we helped you build.

Then there were all those ways to keep
sacrificing. Over sixty thousand miles
of blood vessels to empty, to pack with ice.

Then we learned to hide. We made a tree-
house of our wish to be birds that did not
eat on the ground beneath the feeder.

Then we forgot. We became nostalgic
for open windows and summer curtains.
Dinners of cottage cheese with canned peaches.

First they taught us how
to put on our white

gloves. How to scrub each
night to keep them clean.

Never mind that I
was six and that boys

just twelve years older
died every day in

the jungle. Rotted
where they fell. We learned

to diaper babies,
to pin away from

the child’s skin and
toward our own. How

to curtsy and sit,
ankles crossed, our hands

like sleeping birds in
our laps. Each dinner,

the television
detonated with

gunfire from helicopters.
Mother had me set

the dinner table.
I had been trained which

direction the knife
blade should face. I knew

how to use a shrimp
fork. I could iron

anything smooth. I
was a child, but I

knew that white gloves
and party manners were

best, because when I
was silent, clean, and

neat, my mother
would love me.

Do not say dogs. Do
not disagree. Do not
say it is beautiful outside.
Not next month,
not on Sunday. Do not
say I am sorry.

Put down the phone.
The ramparts smolder,
small pebbles cascading
from the wreck. What
could words still mean
in such fractured remains?

Sleep is a fading constellation.

Three stars:

a king, a shadow queen,

a child who is lost on purpose.

Mother, look out
the window so

when weather
is the topic,

you have
an answer. No

answer. Let us
pretend I’ve called

and we spoke
about my hair

or my torn jeans.
Or anything

you used to carry
on about. I still

carry your voice
deep in me, like

a small animal
with sharp teeth

sleeping uneasily.
Let us not

wake it. Let us
be content to be

disconnected.