and i’d like to be believe that the ache in my breath is from all these cigarettes
not something i’ve passed to my daughter or son
the spinning of something out of nothing and seeing ghosts in the wind
where the sun collapses over the pressure of bloating
some festering that has always been my own
not a wound but pus that demands rupture exactly
the prying open of skin that does not know how to heal
the cessation of a street when it turns on a bend
as if sorrow traveled exclusively in the blood
pitching stakes in ground yet unclaimed