We imagine ourselves
as wolves and owls, hawks 
and lions, sharks and 
deep-eyed jaguars.

They do not think of us that way,
I suspect; never see themselves
in the pale hikers, the secret lovers
naked and earthbound,

the villagers in their encampments,
the accounting manager 
fly fishing in a mountain stream,
dressed to the nines, failing

at every other cast. We never say
I am the worm that endures in darkness,
I am the hard shelled crab that opens 
to vulnerability often yet survives,

I am the trout that escapes death
but hovers nearby after fleeing.
So hard for us to be human. So hard to admit
we are not comfortable beings.

Long ago,
a giant
somehow
fell out of me.

I don’t have
a face or name
to give you,
but can say
the space inside me
where the giant was 
is specific,
individual, 
and huge.

I can sense
a being in the world,
a being I should have been,
moving in a manner as vast
and expansive 
as the planet.

Inside me
where the giant
was born and raised
there is only
a void with an echo
of my own small voice.

I’ve done pretty well
as a shell, I must admit;
have moved the earth
in my own small way,
left footprints,
made some noise,
been a small presence 
nearby and faraway.

That knowledge, though — 

that deep knowledge
that something
dropped out of me
long ago: a void inside
shaped like a larger,
stronger version of me
that I never had
a chance to become;

that knowledge
is a near-fatal wisdom,
a numbing poison
shaped like regret,

a giant named regret.

Five days a week most weeks,
I hear a radio

playing out front
around seven AM.

Last notes of a current hit drain
away; another one starts.

A car horn insists from the curb
that someone is late

meeting someone. Hard footsteps
down the back stairs from

the third floor. A soft exchange of
Spanish. A van door

slides open, closes 
quickly with a deep 

chunk. The motor pitch
rises, the tires hiss, and then

all of it fades away
till tomorrow, same time.

It is torture on some days,
comfort on others, depending

on how the day before felt,
how my bed treated me last night,

what I expect from the rest
of this day and the day to follow.

On any day I do not hear it,
I awake as if I had. That is

torture some on days,
comfort on others.

Now and then I only hear
the radio and then fall asleep

again, or wake to the van
pulling away. I wonder then

if I have missed
a variation

that might have
changed my life,

then
I stop wondering

and my life
goes on unchanged.

tired. tired of animals,
their smells and wants. 
tired of the anguish of feeling
I have failed them.
tired of feeling like 
I have failed and failed
at satisfying any need.
tired of sobbing when
I can’t find the remote.
tired of anger at myself 
when I find it
where it should be,
where I thought I’d looked.
tired of my reliance
on this petty wordplay
to hold me together.
tired of white perfume
screaming in my head
every minute of every day
covering the scent
of a brown world.
tired of the shame
of knowing
my very existence
was the end result 
of a genocide
when they lifted babies
from their mothers’ arms
and sent them to their 
erasure factories.
tired of headlines 
and comments. 
tired of feeling.
tired of waking 
then spending the day waiting
until it is safe to become
unconscious again without
anyone thinking me odd.
tired of having to talk
to anyone who would think me odd.
tired of suspecting
that everyone thinks I’m odd.

the belief that
I am a tendril of something
growing all the time
into a new being
is all that keeps me
from succumbing to
fatigue and its mastery
but the stretching and 
cracking of old shells 
and cages is excruciating
in spite of its necessity.

tired of how obvious
and weary the house feels.
tired of my weak garden
and the way it fails under my care.
tired of my body’s vast
and prolific history of mistakes.
tired of animals
and their scents and wants
and how I bury my face
in their fur to weep over 
the lost control I never really had
in spite of all the illusions
I did not see as illusions
until I was one with them
and as dangerous
as any other deep ache
felt by those 
who somehow manage
to get by
while remaining awake.

Dead fish float
on the surface of dead waters.
I wake up suffocating.

There’s a presence
in the room. 

Is this what it’s like
to die? To be alive
as the world dies?

Whatever is in the room with me
won’t explain.  Won’t say why here,
why now. 

I roll over to try and sleep
on my side.  I’ve been told
it’s better for me. I don’t recall
who told me.  It may be a lie.

The One in my room lifts its arms.
All that has died blazes back to life.
Fish swarming silver across
a pulsing sea. Vanished birds

overhead. My grandparents,
their grandparents.

All that has
vanished — or is this also a lie?
Once gone, always gone.

Forget languages,
customs. Viewpoint,
the taste of smoked salmon, 
love-touch.

The Presence tells me

I’m dishonest,
mercury-souled, foul as sodden cashmere
neglected in an unemptied washer.

Is this also a lie? The world is
ending, to be fair. Truth seems to be
going with it, to return at some point
when it matters again.

I roll over
on my side as I’ve been told to do
and try to get back to sleep

in a room filled with
the fragrance of lilies
without a lily in sight.

Here is
where I was born,

and there is where
I’ll be soon enough.

The space between them
is called by some “waiting to die,”

by others, “learning to live.” All of them say
that how you name the space

is an orientation and
a choice. They argue;

I try to cover my ears.
One day I heard someone else

call the path between them “the Work”
and I opened my arms. 

Couldn’t wait for that embrace.
Into the Work I fell,

landing hard upon it,
sinking in after a few minutes,

learning to breathe 
what I wrote, learning to

write from my breathing, 
all while on my knees

in gratitude for a space
between waiting to die

and learning to live,
for the path called the Work

that has kept me for years,
breathing poetry 

as I learned
how to navigate between

where I was born
and where I will be soon enough.