It’s where black cats tend to live longer
than their allotted nines, and we avoid
cracks in the sidewalk to ward off whatever
might happen in the whatever places
of our minds. And on certain Fridays
when the thirteenth comes around,
we’re comforted that large hotels share
our concerns, allow us to skip entire floors.
It’s a safe place for those who toss salt
over their shoulders, or for that man
we’ve seen bending down to scold flowers
for no apparent reason. When we’re like him,
or in love, on the verge of being lost,
which one of us doesn’t need some kind
of magic to help navigate and go on?
We dig up a footprint of hers and put it
in a flowerpot. Then plant a marigold,
the flower that takes a while to fade.
Sometimes it works. If not, we find out fast
if all along she was planning to leave.
The superstitious can’t help but play
the roulette of this or that, yet understand
those who decry the miraculous. We just
don’t desire their world. We build bonfires
and dance beyond midnight to usher in
the much-needed rain. If nothing happens,
we keep dancing in the fiery dark,
all the while inventing great stories
with heroes and heroines. In this way
we create the world we want to live in,
wild, luminescent, a perpetual fiesta
with secret rules and a guest list made up
of people yet to earn their names.