Some whom I love
sit in this place we call home,
and speak of another city far beyond my own.
I do not know how to speak of distance at the dinner table
so I bury myself in silence and try,
place a mile in a stranger’s mouth,
a morning after on my bedroom floor,
a winter in all my words,
a list of shadows on the person
you just aren’t anymore.
Some whom I love
talk about the many towns
in which they have been on fire,
lands that have held them whole in their burning.
I listen, and shake the dust off my shoulders,
hide the ash under my feet
in the same place we used to scrape our knees
riding our bikes down the street.
Some whom I love
ask for more than I can offer
when my father gives up a sentence
from the history he has received
and they unearth all the trees planted in our back garden.
Rootless hollows await the fall
of one generation’s revolutions
into that of the other.
Some whom I love
watch a changing sky by my side
and gift me a future that my present would deny.
They speak of the sun
as if it does not rise differently
on my fraction of tomorrow.
I do not wish to speak of distance at the dinner table
for my silence cannot afford the words
and the freedoms left to borrow.
Artwork by Tashyana Handy