Let me be first to beg forgiveness.
I draw back the curtain, past dusk.
They are gathering to throw pebbles
and paper cups, and their laughter
seizes the window frame and shakes.
Give me a moment to collect myself.
Let me be first to open the door
as I once tugged my skirt’s unstitched
hem to cover my kneecap’s lucky
domino: I mean the opposite.
Whatever you see me do, know I mean
the next thing you think of, far away,
far gone. I would make no gesture
to anger them because they bedevil
though they intend no harm.
Understand they need their place:
mark life, water, breath, clean grain,
and bodies rushing together, stand not
where they might stumble, slow not
their haste, and struggle not to pin
loose limbs to fleshless ribs.
They sing until the trees wriggle
into ropes, into worms. They cry out,
We have so much farther to go!
They stare down and count the toes
inside their shoes, miles scuffed,
and I still shrink behind my gate,
I drop the handle so it scrapes
like a glove twisting a jar lid,
the brine spills. I measure my love
for what waits by the road,
an antler shed, a corpse’s hard fur,
and the young travelers hurrying
to grow larger, to take up the work
of walking to the city before the moon
corrects its zenith. I learn my lesson
aloud, I repeat it like the failed
closure of a mystery or a dress.
If I fell and they could not stop,
there would be no explaining—no time
for the first complaint—that I wanted
to rise, again, on the gust of known
smells, all from the running, the racing
to seemingly level ground where the pace
can speed up, the secrets be revealed.