Right now it’s simple—agua de tamarindo,
a marmalade cat straggling across the street at twilight,
her solemn eyes on me, ditching dinner for melted
Cabot cheddar on seed bread, hunks of papaya, rose-tinged
flesh mounded in a blue glass bowl, black coffee
with a bitter undertow, the world has not stopped speaking,
all manner of things murmur—nothing here means
you harm, the way elliptical shapes of light fall
at just the right angle between beams of the ramada,
moving shadows the wind guides through this mottled
world, cloudshadow feathering my shoulders, leaf patterns
stirring, and—just like that—the wind leaves me whole,
easy to say yes to the monsoon sliding up from Mexico
in a musky velvet gown, gracias to the small rivers of air
off the ocean that flow up dry creekbeds every afternoon—
it all comes down to air, to the bargain a stranger made
a long time ago with a dying girl when he turned
her head and cleared the passage so she could breathe
fully the accident of happiness, billows of air
taken in, given back, and—it’s a snap—breathing