Spirit who knows me, I do not feel you

fall so far in me,

 

do not feel you turn in my dark center.

 

My mother is sick, and you

cannot help her.

 

My beautiful, moon-faced mother is sick

and you sleep in the dark edges of her shadow.


 

Spirit made to

know me, is this your weight

in my throat, my

chest, the breath heavy so I hardly

breathe it?

 

I do not believe in the beauty of falling.

 

Over and over in the dark I tell myself

I do not have to believe

in the beauty of falling

though she edges toward you,

saying your name with such steadiness.

 

I sit winding blue tape around my wrists

to keep my hands from falling.


 

Holy Ghost, I come for you today

in this overlit afternoon as she

 

picks at the bread with her small hands,

her small rough hands,

the wide blue veins that have always been her veins

winding through them.

 

Ghost, what am I if I

lose the one

who’s always known me?

 

Spirit, know me.

 

Shadow, are you here

splintering into the bread’s thick crust
as it

crumbles into my palms, is that

you, the dry cough in her lungs, the blue tape on my wrists.

The dark hair that used to fall over her shoulders.

Fragile mother, impossible spirit, will you fall so far

from me,

will you leave me to me?

 

To think it

is the last hard kiss, that seasick

 

silence, your bits of breath

 

diffusing in my mouth—