Words on the wall

Dust on the hat brim—
the horse forgives me again,
the horse always does.

The taps go quiet, the chairs come down,
and still some stanza walks the town.
We sweep the floor of every sound

Be kind. Be brave. Be brief, if you can.
Rhyme or don't. Take the mic and stand.
What you bring tonight will leave a stain—

I poured the years into a thumb of glass
and watched them brown the way old letters do.
The ice gave up. The hours would not pass.

The bridge unspools the city like a thread.
A busker plays the song you used to hum.
I count the windows lit, the windows dead.

Bless the ceiling fan, the small machine of grief.
Bless the streetlight bending through the blinds.
Bless the hour that will not bring relief

Beads on the banister, glitter in the sink.
Ash on a forehead I don't recognize.
The city forgives faster than I think.

Eight arms of morning reach across the bed.
Each one remembers something I forgot.
I taste the salt of everything you said

They dream of leaving prints that stay.
They dream of weather. They dream of clay.
They dream of being something soft enough

The mill is a cathedral with no roof.
Deer come through the parking lot at dawn.
My grandfather's name is its own proof:

River, you old gossip, you carry our names
downstream to towns that mispronounce us.
Thank you for not flooding. Thank you for the rain.

Mi corazón habla in two tongues at once,
una por mi madre, one for the road.
When I dream, the border doesn't exist.

The palms are tired. The light is unembarrassed.
A dog in a Cadillac. A god in a thrift store coat.
I write a poem about the city that ignores me

Down where the peat keeps every footstep warm,
my grandmother left a song without a name.
I carry it badly. I carry it through the storm.

I came here to be unreachable on purpose.
The espresso machine is louder than my doubt.
A stranger laughs. A stranger orders surplus.

Give me three minutes and I'll give you a life:
the knife, the kiss, the call I didn't take.
Give me three minutes and a microphone

We are loud because the mountains taught us how.
We are tender because the altitude won't let us run.
We are here because somewhere a kid is reading aloud

It still smells like the winter you were alive.
I keep it on the chair the way one keeps a door.
The sleeves remember arms they will not hold.

The word for longing does not cross the border whole.
I smuggle it in fragments, sew it back at night.
What survives the journey is the shape of the original

See also: the morning you made coffee in my shirt.
See also: the argument we lost on purpose.
See also: every page where I wrote *us*

The lamps go out in waves like a slow tide.
The books exhale. The carpet keeps the score.
I leave a poem in the returns slot, undecided

The city council meets in 4/4 time.
The vote is a downbeat the mayor cannot mute.
A kid on the corner is playing the dime

Across the road the maps were drawn to keep us out,
the trumpet still gets through. The verse still gets across.
I sing the street my mother walked without a doubt.

A thousand birds agree on a single sky
and draw their secret with no chalk, no plan.
I watch them divide the dusk and multiply.

The saints are cold. The river isn't sorry.
A busker plays a song my mother knew.
I buy a postcard I will never mail.

Leave the porch light on for whoever is late—
the coyote, the cousin, the version of you
that took the long way home through the gate