what comes after this moment
after my fingers lose contact
from the back of her hand?
it is winter outside
because the silence tells me
and I lose track of day and night
my mother, who is 3000 miles away,
wants to plan a future trip
that will hold off an unbearable loneliness
and all I can do is nod
back to the hand
that becomes more familiar
and invisible each day–
like the sound of Phillip Glass’s imagination
caught between leaving
and being left behind
what is this life where I kill
before a life can be taken away from me
I once told a stranger next to me
that I knew something that matters
but it was a mistake
born of wanting
I am on another bus
on another night
in a city that can’t know my name
or the texture thick like sugar
of the space that we hold between us
that grows, unrepentant,
each time
we make a decision to live.