I don’t get to walk around
Like I’m in the country
And only my own
Memory can see
Two bare feet, pale below the water line
Rounded to rock
Or the river’s jewelry
Drying in the sun, sparkling
Past the mud
Don’t get to wander young
In nothing else, in heat
Through snow
I don’t get to go
Where that girl got murdered
In Morningside Park
A freshman, the deeper part
I forget her name
There’s something there in her
I know it’s near
Where nothing’s going wrong
My body’s covered
In one long butter-colored
Cotton dress stained with rain
I’ve just sprung up
In splashy sun
Of earth—a ghost pipe out of place
A corpse flower
The same temperature
As a human body
Giant as myself
Forgetting I am me
I get shoved, stood in front of
Called a cunt in the middle of the street
A pussy when I don’t give you money
I’m stalked for blocks
By some smiling guy, skinny
And quite beautiful
Thin with liquid eyes
Sinister, in a tank top
I’d like to walk around at night
Or in the day, outside, where I live
With clothes I chose
The ones I’ve worn
Today, the jeans I have on now,
They smell like me, restless laundry
Too tight where I keep changing
I’d take my loop
Up the hill
To the church
The warmth of mourners mixing
Human myth, three purple stars
Scotch-taped to the windows
Cut from paled paper
Years ago by children, the faded rainbow
That would lift me
Those grown children’s clouds
Creased closer to the endless stairs
I climb to get my groceries
Normal as those
Little white
Perfectly cut
Tags on city trees—
I’m Your New Tree:
At sunrise I’ll get to see
That knee-high jail of all my favorite sky-blue weeds