When You Return

Fallen leaves will climb back into trees.

Shards of the shattered vase will rise

and reassemble on the table.

Plastic raincoats will refold

into their flat envelopes. The egg,

bald yolk and its transparent halo,

slide back into the thin, calcium shell.

Curses will pour back into mouths,

letters unwrite themselves, words

siphoned up into the pen. My gray hair

will darken and become the feathers

of a black swan. Bullets will snap

back into their chambers, the powder

tamped tight in brass casings. Borders

will disappear from maps. Rust

revert to oxygen and time. The fire

return to the log, the log to the tree,

the white root curled up

in the unsplit seed. Birdsong will fly

into the lark’s lungs, answers

become questions again.

When you return, sweaters will unravel

and wool grow on the sheep.

Rock will go home to mountain, gold

to vein. Wine crushed into the grape,

oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled in

to the spider’s belly. Night moths

tucked close into cocoons, ink drained

from the indigo tattoo. Diamonds

will be returned to coal, coal

to rotting ferns, rain to clouds, light

to stars sucked back and back

into one timeless point, the way it was

before the world was born,

that fresh, that whole, nothing

broken, nothing torn apart.