there’s a witch grave in Tallahassee altar     for tea-thimbles 
pennies    I tell you her wedding date carved     into the pillar 
sandwiched between birth     & death & 100 years to the
 day      before my own parents married     you glance at the 
sky like you’re waiting for a cloud     to bruise you god-
fisted     these days I am remarkably sunlit absorbing     &
 considering tenderness a verb     hold breath to walk past a
 cemetery find    wishing instead a collapsed lung      a word 
loses meaning the more you imagine     how it would move in 
front of you     sincerity unbearable as squinting     into the 
wet open throat of summer     people like us aren’t looking   
  for happiness but these trees might be enough     Pisces moon 
& sentimental fern shadow    burn away clean as brushfire
    nobody loves a city nobody loves     what can’t love them
 back     but if I sit still     enough & let my voice play 
painter     in the cave     if I’m hermit & gin-soaked it’s all
 language    of possession   the only difference     between 
selfishness & love is who gets to walk away    from what     I 
tell you I once stumbled on a wedding photo was shocked     to 
see my parents holding each other     ’s gaze my mother’s
 eyes     fearsome blue     & wide how finding that grave
     was the thriftshop version      of a capsized magic I always 
meant      to get around to feeling & you tell me     as a kid 
you were made to stuff poison     into meats feed to dogs
     on the other side of the fence not knowing why      it shouldn’t 
be victory walking into a room & feeling     just one thing at a
 time     life such terrific sandpaper     vaporous crosshatch of 
limbs     on the other side of the page some boy in some lake 
    floats in the nailed-shut window     of what his heart doesn’t 
know    will leave him unscathed     the difference between
 empathy & fidelity is who presses what words     into whose skin
 who pretends     to or to not swell with narrative who carries 
story     like a clung rot tooth    nobody can bear to pull