only a mother can walk / with the weight / of a second beating heart.

i am writing you from inside a body that used to be yours. which is to say, i am writing as a son.

there are men who touch breasts / as they would / the tops of skulls. men / who carry dreams / over mountains, the dead / on their backs.

he had the hands / of someone i used to know. someone i was used to.

in the square below: a nun, on fire, / runs silently toward her god— / 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘯, he says. / she opens.

you reach / down press / a hand / to this blood / -warm body / like a word / being nailed / to its meaning

i don’t know if you’re happy, ma. i never asked.

how this / bread, daily broken, dipped / in honey—& lifted / with exodus tongues, like any other / lie—is only true as your trust / in hunger.

how / does anyone stop / regret / without cutting / off his hands?

is there a language for falling out of language?

i build a life & tear it apart / & the sun keeps shining.

my son, / even tomorrow / you will have today.

how i wanted to be that sky—to be filled every flight & fall at once.

i turn him / over. to face it. the cathedral / in his sea-black eyes. the face / not mine—

only a mother can walk / with the weight / of a second beating heart.

i took off our language and wore my english, like a mask, so that others would see my face, and therefore yours.

he moves like any / other fracture, revealing the briefest doors. / the dress / petaling off him like the skin / of an apple. as if their swords / aren’t sharpening / inside him.

you move through me like rain / heard / from another country.

the sea splitting at the bow. he watches it open like a / thief staring into his own heart: all bones and splintered wood. / waves rising on both sides.

puddle of sky / on earth. as if to look down / on the dead is to look up / at my own face, trampled / by music.