FUEL

Even at this late date, sometimes I have to look up

the word “receive.” I received his deep

and interested gaze.

A bean plant flourishes under the rain of sweet words.

Tell what you think—I’m listening.

The story ruffled its twenty leaves.

*

Once my teacher set me on a high stool

for laughing. She thought the eyes

of my classmates would whittle me to size.

But they said otherwise.

We’d laugh too if we knew how.

I pinned my gaze out the window

on a ripe line of sky.

That’s where I was going.