I make a bulletted list
Of all the ways I am different
From the bones in the bricks
But each bullet
Slips through my bare ribs
Like this is an everyday question
That doesn't need an answer

The first love I remember
Stands where the grass gets taller
Because she stands there
And she hopes when she pouts her lips
It makes a sound like dogs barking
And it does.

I trade my time for my stomach
Over coffee
With the rain everywhere
Just begging for me back
To mix with the bones in the bricks
And I curl up in the public bathroom sobbing
While someone reads the paper

My first love
Stands naked over the galaxy
In an abandoned resort casino
Drawing moss from the sweat
Of the boy who works at the gas station
This is what happened
To the kids of the twentieth century
Who wanted to be astronauts
So they could run away from home

I measure stones with my pocketwatch
Perpetually interrogating
The ground under my feet
For signs of a past I wasn't there for
Or some ghost who needs vigil
So I'll at least feel useful
It's not that it's quiet here
There are sounds I just
Don't know how to answer back

Back home where the water's words make sense
I walk along the levee barefeet in tall grass
Where the sky curls new colors out of itself
Where the bone in the soil weaves dandelions
And where the lyme bug sunk it's teeth
Into my hips
And named itself Leaving
And named itself Cody
I've called this abandoned
A sunken ship and all it's graveyards
But out across the water
Where my boots don't know the rocks yet
Something
A lot of things
Are still growing