The bend of years is partial, a pockmarked continuum of dropped stitches against the fast-forward spit of a seventh-inning pitcher known for curves.
This made us cling: to the bodies of pets, lovers, the photos of children––ours, the ones we had been, the ones we never knew, could not remember, and the new dead.
We could not name our joys, only the pause between days in which we called our exiled silences back home to hang them on loops of the threads we meant to weave back into place, somehow.
My daughter is sleeping, and I want to cup my hands around her face, to frame for a moment what won’t be kept, to hold inside the curve the stillness of an original praise song, the only one with any bearing and still it won’t quite hold. Look at you. There you are. Come here.