My hands come together prayerful
around the whistling hot cupful
to wait
to sip scorchless
to feel its breath grow cool
degree by half degree
across my lip—
A vigil I cannot keep.
All day I touch my raw tongue to the back of my teeth.
Again, broadside
in the sidelong
glare of the late day
I will wait,
to watch myself grow taller,
to elongate among the trees
to feel the articulation
of the earth’s great spine rounding
vertebra by vertebra
away from the sun
and my body, my knowing
emptying slowly into the substance of shadow–
But I cannot.
The trees and I are lonelier for it.
I test myself and fail.
How can you bear what I cannot?
I rethink mothering.
You called
from the belly
of a parking garage.
A post-shift ritual.
Stay with me, you heard.
A hand hung
in the nauseous green light
found traction in your hand
so slender
when I grasped it that time
to haul you up
where you had fallen
to your knees
on the South Bass Trail
the grand nothing
of the Grand Canyon
leering just under your hands.
Don’t leave, he begged
and you stayed.
For hours.
Until his grasp grew fainter
and fainter.
Relinquished.
Photo by Fast Glass FX on Unsplash
