1. til we fold

a life does not live in
befores and afters, like
muscles wrapping bones,
like tendons and ligaments, 
each moment plants itself
irreplaceably in holding a
lifetime

a story, in all the anarchy of how it lives 
inside, a prayer to the page to not be a
plane of angles, but instead a boat, safe
passage across the untamable, confluence
of too many truths to knit together more than
a glance before each hungry pursuit of lines
slips on the drooling jowls of change

I am reaching down the long throat of the 
inevitable, past generations of pinched tight
longing, to our still center, hot and erupting, 
to be known

there is symmetry in all of it, the contours 
of my ancestors’ choosing, the birds of prey
darting at my windows, creation is a poet, a
trickster, and a furious lover, she won’t let us
out of our promises, she will haunt us with
her faith in us till we fold