outside thermalito
Persimmons ripen with the first frost.
The bitterness inflicted on them
takes their own bitterness away.
Would that there were some other way.
if found, then measured
1. Now that I can, I am afraid to become a citizen.I don’t want to become anything because I’m afraid of being seen.
I am arriving, and departing,and later I will punish myself for looking over at the person sitting next to me on the plane, checking their screen and reading their email. For now there is no punishment.Today I have realized everyone is just as boring as me.Everyone in TSA had enormous hands. I still refuse to travel with my green card.
2. It is my mother’s birthday and I bought her merchandise from a schoolI didn’t attend but only visited. She, too, understands the value of cultural capital.
Today I am wounded. I like to say wounded instead of sad. Sadness is reserved for days when I can actually make money from what I do. My mother raised me to make sure nothing I ever did I did for free.
3. When I land, Northern California is burning.We keep a suitcase near the door just in case. A man calls me three different names before giving up and asks if my son has begun coughing yet. Beneath all that ash, no one seems bothered if you cry in public.
Sitting around a circle of grateful alcoholics, some of whom will leavethe room towards a clear portrait of their ruin,which can either mean they will or will never return,a man tells me I have been selfish, and I admit I have.Sometimes I want every goddamn piece of the pie.A woman pulls aside her mask to smoke and says she’s going to look up what temperature teeth begin to melt, the implication being that if teeth melted, they won’t be able to identify her parents who are still missing in Paradise.
When I pray, I don’t know who I am talking to yet.I take the eucharist in my mouth for the first time since changing religions and it is not as holy as I imagined.
4. How easy. How effortless. This breath.I’m here. I’m here. I’m right here. I want to say.I wish things were simple, like taking just one drink and not another, like not burning in a fire,like letting things be good without being holy.I wouldn’t have to pretend to tryto resume the bounty of this blossom.
from Quarterly West
