fugue
my mind’s a vine
i’ve yet to decide if this is a dream
woe to the ocean
my attempt to pursue the wind
pooling water carries an intimacy foreign me
standing in the slanted rain
i’ve not been myself
contra
we were evicted in the
fall my mother’s sought
sobriety since i was small
she entered detox but the
withdrawals were too much
the night we were removed
we stuffed what we could in
trunks i was the youngest one
& could no longer watch mom
& her girlfriends sip beer &
play cards their laughter hearty
& full like a running bath nor
could i abscond into my brother’s
room to play with our newborn
kittens their eyes unopened to the
world
doves
we were fruit plucked from the vine these regions of my
mind became foreign to reason i was unseasoned enamored
by fires i handed my dad the pliers but couldn’t reach him
we spent each winter in the deep end he doesn’t know how
close i’ve come to drowning or how the sites of my grief are
razed like city streets
