UNTIL

For Franny

You love each other until the city becomes beautiful.

Until this gutter becomes a monument to that time you

needed menthols, in the pouring rain, in the summertime,

in the middle of the night. Until the street lamps lighting

the way to sundown become constellations guiding you home.

You love each other until you build yourself a city.

The couch is City Hall, the TV set is County Jail, the bed

is an elementary school playground. It is always recess.

You love each other until the city loves you back.

Lining up crosswalks with your doorstep, placing

taxicabs on corners. There is a deli with ice cream

up the block, you have everything you need.

You love the city, when you love each other.

And when you wake up in a city that you don’t recognize,

and the traffic lights blink angry,

it is not because the city has grown cold.

It is not because your hands no longer fit in his.

It is because it is someone else’s turn to lean

out her window into the cold cold morning and say,

Baby, look at all those traffic lights, blinking their way into dawn.

SCISSORS

When we moved in together,

I noticed—

You keep your scissors in the knife drawer.

I keep mine with the string and tape.

We both know how to hide our sharpest parts,

I just don’t always recognize my own weaponry.

SOMETHING WE DON’T TALK ABOUT, PART II

how many times I said yes

how many times I said yes and yes and yes

because it was what you wanted to hear

and what I wanted you to hear

and what I wanted to want

and every time the walls

stayed above my head instead of

falling down upon me upon us

because if it was going to stop

then it would have to be me who said no

the walls were not going to help

and I didn’t say no I didn’t I never did

it was never your fault never yours

never mine only the walls that didn’t tumble

when they should have

when they should have known

they should have been able to tell

when was the right time to fall

THE MOVES

You can tell she is counting exit signs.

You can tell she has left

her shoes by the door, laces already tied.

Leaving is an easy art to learn. But the

advanced steps—the pirouettes and arabesques

are difficult to master.

This is how I disappear in pieces.

This is how I leave while not moving from my seat.

This is how I dance away.

This is how I’m gone before you wake.

POSTCARDS

I had already fallen in love with

far too many postage stamps,

when you appeared on my doorstep,

wearing nothing but a postcard promise.

No. Appear is the wrong word.

Is there a word for sucker-punching

someone in the heart?

Is there a word for when you are sitting

at the bottom of a roller coaster,

and you realize the climb is coming,

that you know what the climb means,

that you can already feel the flip in your

stomach from the fall, before you have

even moved—is there a word for that?

There should be.

You can only fit so many words in a postcard.

Only so many in a phone call.

Only so many into space, before you forget

that words are sometimes used for things

other than filling emptiness.

It is hard to build a body out of words.

I have tried. We have both tried.

Instead of laying your head on my chest,

I tell you about the boy who lives downstairs,

who stays up all night playing his drum set.

The neighbors have complained:

they have busy days tomorrow.

But he keeps on thumping through the night,

convinced, I think, that practice makes perfect.

Instead of holding my hand, you tell me about

the sandwich you made for lunch, the way the

pickles fit so perfectly against the lettuce.

Practice does not make perfect.

Practice makes permanent.

Repeat the same mistakes over and over,

and you don’t get any closer to Carnegie Hall.

Even I know that.

Repeat the same mistakes over and over,

and you don’t get any closer.

You—

never get any closer.

Is there a word for the moment you win

tug-of-war? When the weight gives,

and all that extra rope comes hurtling

towards you, how even though you’ve won,

you still end up with muddy knees and

burns on your hands?

Is there a word for that?

I wish there was.

I would have said it, when we were finally

alone together on your couch, neither one of us

with anything left to say.

Still now, I send letters into space,

hoping that some mailman somewhere

will track you down and recognize you

from the descriptions in my poems;

he will place the stack of them in your hands

and tell you, There is a girl who still writes you.

She doesn’t know how not to.

HIROSHIMA

I.

When they bombed Hiroshima, the explosion formed a mini

supernova, so that every living animal, human, or plant that received

direct contact with the rays from that sun was instantly turned to ash.

What was left of the city soon followed.

The long-lasting damage from nuclear radiation

caused an entire city and its population to turn into powder.

II.

When I was born, my mom says I looked around the hospital room

with a stare that said, This? I’ve done this before.

She says that I have old eyes. When my Grandpa Genji died

I was only five years old, but I took my mom by the hand

and told her, Don’t worry, he’ll come back as a baby.

And yet, for someone who has apparently done this already,

I still haven’t figured anything out yet.

My knees still buckle every time I get onstage.

My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons,

mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth.

But in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away leaving only

a wristwatch, a diary page, the mudflap from a bicycle.

So no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets,

I keep trying, hoping that one day I’ll write the poem that I will be

proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed.

III.

My parents named me Sarah, which is a biblical name.

In the original story, God told Sarah she could do something

impossible and she laughed. Because the first Sarah?

She didn’t know what to do with Impossible.

And me? Well, neither do I. But I see the impossible every day.

Impossible is trying to connect in this world; trying to

hold on to others when things are blowing up around you; knowing

that while you are speaking, they aren’t just waiting

for their turn to talk. They hear you.

They feel exactly what you feel at the same time that you feel it.

It’s what I strive for every time I open my mouth:

That impossible connection.

IV.

There is a piece of wall in Hiroshima that was burnt black by the

radiation. But on the first step, a person blocked the rays from hitting

the stone. The only thing left is a permanent shadow of positive light.

After the A-Bomb, specialists said it would take seventy-five years for

the radiation-damaged soil of Hiroshima to grow anything again.

But that spring, there were new buds popping up from the earth.

When I meet you, in that moment,

I am no longer a part of your future.

I start quickly becoming part of your past.

But in that instant, I get to share a part of your present.

And you get to share a part of mine.

And that is the greatest present of all.

So if you tell me I can do the impossible, I will probably laugh at you.

I don’t know if I can change the world. Yet.

Because I don’t know that much about it.

And I don’t know that much about reincarnation either,

but if you make me laugh hard enough,

sometimes I forget what century I’m in.

This isn’t my first time here. This isn’t my last time here.

These aren’t the last words I’ll share. But just in case,

I’m trying my hardest to get it right this time around.