Dialogues with Rising Tides. Kelli Russell Agodon

      because we can’t change the world but we can

      change our hardware. America breaks my heart

      some days and some days it breaks itself in two.

      I watched a woman having a breakdown

      in the mall today, and when the security guard

      tried to help her, what I felt was all of us

      peeking from her purse as she threw it

      across the floor into Forever 21. And yes,

      the walls felt like another way to hold us

      and when she finally stopped crying

      I heard her say to the fluorescent lighting,

      Some days the sky is too bright. And like that

      we were her flock in our black coats

      and white sweaters, some of us reaching

      our wings to her and some of us flying away.

      BRAIDED BETWEEN THE BROKEN

      Today apologies were falling

      from the trees and the apples

      were being ignored.

      There’s a chapter in our lives

      where we tried to shred pages,

      where we tried to rewrite the tale.

      Let’s call that chapter The Numbness,

      or The Boredom, or the place where we forgot

      we were alive.

      That morning I woke up and wandered outside

      onto the backtrail,

      past the No Trespassing sign into the arms

      of an evergreen or a black bear. It didn’t matter

      who held me then; I was the moss, the lichen,

      the mushroom growing on the fallen log.

      No one expects perfection, except when they do,

      which is always.

      Even you, king of the quiet,

      crash when I talk about my brokenness.

      Cover up, your fractures are showing.

      In my life I try to apologize for things I haven’t done

      yet. Those are the bruised apples of me,

      the possible fruit rotting in the field.

      Remember when I kept replaying melancholy?

      Remember when I opened our melody with a switchblade?

      Rip out the carpet. Mow down the dahlias.

      Let’s ruin our lives …

      It felt good to hurt then—

      until it didn’t, until we were left

      with bad flooring, a garden

      where nothing grew.

      You’re asking about the next chapter

      and the one after that. You’re asking

      what time I’ll be home and handing me

      a cloth to buff my halo.

      Let’s put a comma here.

      Let’s put in a semicolon and think about

      the next sentence.

      I dream of erasers. I dream of wite-out.

      I dream of the song where the pharmacist

      doesn’t judge me for not being able to make it through

      the day without some sort of pill.

      UNSUSTAINABLE

      When you broke my recycle bin, I

      started calling you Fresh Kills.

      I want to keep you in my plastic

      Happy Meal heart, but what snaps open

      stays on Earth forever, my center floating

      down a canal until it’s swallowed by a seal.

      Who cares our plastic drifts as a tagalong

      to the sunset, an autobiography of artificial,

      a dead whale washed up in the Philippines,

      eighty-eight pounds of plastic in its gut?

      Damn the turtles! Customers at McDonald’s

      want their straws! And we could be practical

      lovers if we remembered to bring

      our reusable totes into the store—you said

      the cashier gave me the stink eye for forgetting,

      but I was lost in my own head thinking

      about my grandmother in hospice, leaving

      the store with a casket of even more plastic bags.

      It hurts to say my convenience is more important

      than the sea. I write a postcard to Earth

      —I love you, but watch me navigate your landfills

      in stilettos, let me kill your buzz. And you know

      I’m talking about the bees now. My hands in the dirt—

      if you want to gather honey, don’t kick over every hive.

      I DON’T OWN ANXIETY, BUT I BORROW IT REGULARLY

      Once I believed the saint I carried could keep me

      safe. He lived in a rain jacket I wore

      to keep out the weather and by weather,

      I mean danger. Tell me a story

      where no one dies. That story begins in heaven,

      ends in heaven, and includes chapters

      on heaven, heaven, and heaven.

      It’s not really a story but a wish, or a concern.

      Sometimes I wonder if there’s one moment

      when no one is dying, where we all exist

      on this planet without loss—

      but there are too many of us

      doing foolish things, someone is always sipping

      the arsenic, someone is always spinning

      a gun. And then

      add old age, misfortune, a tree that’s leaned too long

      in the forest and a family of five

      headed off for a hike.

      We cannot predict our tragedies.

      We cannot plan a party for the apocalypse

      because friends of the apocalypse know

      the apocalypse always shows up

      uninvited with a half-eaten bag of chips.

      This is why some of us wake up

      in the middle of the night looking for a saint—

      and maybe your saint is a streetlight

      or maybe the sea, or maybe

      it’s the moment you walk out the door