postcard from home

the world we were in is overgrown

with the pit-pierced places in us we were afraid to give a name

and sharper lines of sight.

in it, we go foraging for selves

across the sword-swish of time in the fall of its folds,

unpeeling pasts from presents, the moth of a memory

skewered

with a toothpick to the

yolk-yellow lamplight of this childhood bedroom

where i am five years old and still cross-legged,

as if learning how to pray.

emerging adulthood

god catches on my teeth and gets stuck in my molars as i

go up the escalator through bakerloo’s esophagus, choked

up into the kind of thursday with an unfinished

face. i want to ask my mother

why she made me, if she ever imagined

me collecting all my selves from the five o’clock shadows

that open in the streets like thighs, more out of instinct

than desire. the days

sit on me like sweat-wet sheets and

time watches me

taste the colors change in people’s faces, i can feel

god’s breath, drying my skin, losing patience.