Standing in the checkout line, I waved hello, but I didn’t recognize you. Once amicable, previously approachable, you were not there.   Disturbed, but not surprised, I recalled hints of

I stutter out children’s verses in my Grandparents’ tongue strung on genealogical trees, the curses of sins of fathers and wars, cremated kins of history floating in a sea of

It’s travelling to my heart and the diagnosis, it doesn’t look good It’s melting into my veins and the prognosis, it doesn’t look good I crawled my way to Saint

It has taken two years to name the grain of weight unloading within a mile of our home- steadfast pistol unmistaken for the fourth of July. A night howl ricochet-