A Place
As a foreigner, I wasted a lot of energy
being from somewhere else
when I could have been from there,
where the sea did yoga all day, one deep breath
after another, and the formal greeting
of smashing a tea cup was new to me.
The informal greeting was to have a thought,
such as the mind is a badass telephoto lens,
and whisper it up against an ear,
which in that moment, you were the only lover of,
and never speak of that thought again.
There was also this dead man
no one had it in them to bury, who as bones
was more beautiful than the tree
he was a pile of bones under. It was hard
with him to know where his ears were
when I came by, I sort of whispered
to all of him, how many birds
are afraid of heights, or good sex
is a lavishing of wordless praise. By the time
I’d lived there half my life, I found myself
answering the question, where were you born,
like this: dawn. The day before I left,
I sent myself a postcard that read,
I’m already missing how you’ll come
to believe you made yourself up. A thought
meant for the universe as much as me.
