is the egg yolk, broken when it was meant to be fried,
the sobbing of a child who’s just found
that their favorite character does not survive,
the scraped knee, the store out of cigarettes (already?)
the unreturned love, a freezing morning
with the jacket left at home, time and the wicked
things it does to the flesh, the dog’s unthinking
shit, the stained rug, the stubbed toe,
the earth’s unthinking belch, a perilously polished floor
and the winsome slipping of a whole healthy foot,
“you told them?” and the fallout of a slipped word
or three, the awkward silence when the maqlouba
doesn’t flip quite right, the pigeons back into the garden
again though you swore you’d finally managed to shoo
them away for good this time, and in this future
with a home uncontested, wholly ours, without the cold
blue anger of a body’s clockwork stolen, what is left?
what is left of that cruel and unredeemable life? simply
the good hard glare of a cousin whose feet you have just
mystified, sent the ball sneaking past them to goal, simply
the world’s tiny catastrophes and the moments they sweeten.
image: Ivan Bandura
