There are rooms from which I know I departed
too quickly.
Displacement is its own unstable architecture.
I can never completely erase what was faint
if it was persistent to begin with.
When I take my first clear breath after illness,
the world smells both sharp and tender.
I remember echoes in stairwells, and streetcorners where
small flames were tended in the service of our hungers.
There are flowers that don't recognize boundaries.
We should learn from them that nothing wild is
ever made to be captive.
Breath can rise even from the cracked earth.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
