a.r. 🌬️

ALT Your Shadow Invents You Every Time Light Fails to Pass Through You BY MICHAEL WASSON Some days you wake to the sound of smoke pouring through the keyhole in the room. Open your eyes. This is only a test. The bluing of your hands can be anything you want. The bruised dawn like a river rising to your windowsill. A purple forgetting how blood leaves the body in ruin. A forsaken lip smeared in thirst resting on your lip as though your skin could salvage the dream of being so touched. Listen. I know you're afraid—I am too. I know how the body prays for beauty but remains a shipwreck you are building in my image. How many books are enough to tell you you're alive today? How many days end up all dark & the monsters of your childhood appear like saints erased of their mouths? How the mouth cradles a tongue carved by years in exile until its ready to shape a word like a parting hand- (CONT. 1/3)

ALT ful of promised wildflowers: Happy Mother's Day. This is you at the edge of a paradise growing back after being scorched from the face of earth. This is us afraid of the men who fail to kiss us goodnight & step through the walls. Some days you are living a nightmare. Some days a miracle as wide as a spared life. Listen to me. There will be a day when the world will need you most—be alive on that day. I vow your father is as American as the bones your mother grew inside you. The gunshot in your head is only a shadow puppet, a slow explosion of a field of qém'es in early June's bloom. Look. Look at the colors like little gods on fire—hurdling in & out of each other's terrified skies. Are you still alone in bed? Is it morning yet where you are? The smoke turns to rain as usual. Listen, my love. This year is just a visitor & next year's (CONT. 2/3)

ALT ghost. Take care of it because yes—yes, you do deserve flowers for once in your life. You will be the only one left. So hold my hand & call me tomorrow. We are all here. It's okay—it's okay to be this afraid. I am you. Can you feel that? Yes, that is the whole world outside moving without us. But listen to me. Listen. Here's the light an arm's length away. The ceiling reforming above you, like another heaven after its own self- destruction. Here's my body & you stretching lifelong toward every hole in the house left as warm as a father running from horizon to horizon. Don't be afraid. Touch me here where, some days, it hurts. Get up, get dressed, open the door. (END 3/3)