A Lifetime’s Second
I remember how the spark used to
light up in me, split like veins
of street lamps, spilling electric
blood into forest dark;
the cartwheels of hunger my stomach
would flip and tender-foot through
fields of running, stiletto cut
stories told of room breaths in dark.
I look now out at remnants of
rainfall, pitter-patter of birdsong
on backyard window glass, wonders
for the steel age dawn,
and ask how set-upon was this end,
how pushed out this stillness
in the moving plane, how distant
the warmth of promise.
Bitten once, the memory faded,
rotten apple nervous, losing sleep
and washing dreams through glass
pills and sugar water, compensating
for something I could not name,
but was lost.
