Status Updates From The Sorrow Apartments

DAFFODILS AND HYACINTHS

Spring has not
been cancelled,
not even
postponed -
ask the daffodils
and hyacinths,
it's only
the clinking
of laughter
that's missing.

God

I forgive you
for letting
us invent you.

There was plum jam.
There was toast and sun
coming in—

The Dark Ages never really went away,
they just got sent to their room to think about what they'd done. They think they'd like
to do it all over again, they think they'll be back,

Being human means having to
remember so much. It
means having to exist in time,
which doesn't really exist-at least not
in the manner of timelines
made popular in Encyclopedia
Britannicas. Remember those?
Time, friends, is an unruly
boss.

Eras are messy

I lost my
way —why
did I ever
think it mine?

the stars comprising Orion's Belt—
as if it were the lustrous sparks and not
the leveling dark that connects us.

we conclude
that autumn is a kind
of triage for everything
summer was-the
bursting open, the coming
apart,

to fill that
hollowness
with
consequences,
with the truth
about how
nothing swung
at blindly—
with force
and glee-
yields anything
resembling sweets.

What weighs
more一
pound
of feathers
or the memory
of thinking
you
might fly?

my mother pulled the drapes
tight, mid-day, what happened
to time, how I could not fix it.

How
did they get there?
They
heard the word
extinction—
and being wise
creatures
decided to hide
where
fire and ice, where
time couldn't find them.