Here’s how you inherit
             the future.
You stand here searching
             for lost parts
but only find people
             rehearsing gravity.
They make syllables of promise
             then rise into air.
They are pretty & distant
             & will remain this way.
Will let you down
             but never remember.
If speech heals silence,
             it’s only in your head.
Only in this festival wind
             can you say things like,
this city is empty
             since you want it to feel that way.
People love vertically.
             Rain falls in phases.
Subterranean, we transport
             our bones between places.
We recalculate the distance
             & it is horrible.
Siri says
             our bodies are lightning rods.
Where we touch we leave scars.
             There is nothing safe about this.
About felled pines
             we haul home in feeble numbers
or hormonal salmon we fry from bays.
             We handle sensation
by naming it instinct.
             The true north of sound:
scream, siren, fiction.
             We say she broke herself
about the sick girl
             we believe is only sad
& might need us. I fathom
             home is a hinge.
We relocate since we must
             by swinging.
My mom once assured me she’d stand
             between me & pain.
She didn’t know the radius
             of here to there,
the x-axis of time
             outside of time
& the privacy of clouds,
             divided & forgotten.
Like girlhood, like schools of ladybugs
             in this Zoloft January.
If I tell you one story, it is the redaction
             of another story.
There is no destiny, only memory.
             Chatbots erase
our voices to murk.
             We wait for Instagram feeds
when losses repair to stories.
             We would laugh, we knew it, about
swallowed furniture, retrofitted
             reflections where artificial faces
& memes swayed.
             The years knew better.
We are learning to love
             cracks in the ceiling,
a lifted eyelid away.
             We look into them now
that we’ve learned to drift & become
             financial analysts of our shrinking.
We excel spreadsheet, we are free
             now that we have lost
count of everything.