—To my fellow Benders, I threw on my grief.
MY DUMB HEART
is open wide and overflows with water. How I manage
to stay alive is beyond me. I like to think that I am more
than a wallflower, that others see something in me, that the love
I feel swells out in swarms, but sometimes I wonder what good
that will do—after the apocalypse, what will be left but a swarm
of beetles—what but exit signs, laundry, and dirt,
my sadness like a cloth underneath—still present and wet
with earth and never clean again, never reflecting
sun or moon or teeth quite like the first time. My sadness goes
with me like a cloud. My sadness rides around with me
in the backseat. It wears a black cape and snakeskin boots
that click down afternoon hallways. It trades, sometimes, for
feather-duster wings when it is a she and she
is in the mood for forgiveness. She eats chocolates by the handful
and offers them over silently. Every time
they taste like tears, because they were not meant
for someone like me, and yet
I try them, because there is a persistence
to them. They bring out the hope in me. I look up, like moon, and I think
that is what I love most about her. Every time she trades
for her wings, she keeps those snakeskin boots.