i had the gut feeling
i wouldn’t be ready
to head home 

but your trees
stopped stooping
to touch me

the old spare bed
lay empty in june
tea cups empty

on a dirty table
my elbows hurt
like broken feathers

i never had the kind
of bones that showed
bright white on xrays

so we took a long time
to say goodbye, blew
kisses through open doorways

now i sit chanting
slightly crazed by moonlight
in another northern town

my mouth moves like it’s
trying to make notes, sing
some messy blues

and i march in place on old
floorboards, remember the
dreams full of hanging moss

raised spirits, cracked concrete
voodoo mornings face down
in a humid hangover from a night of wild poems

we never asked what comes next
or how much it would cost
the fires made themselves, put themselves out

i had the premonition that the wind
on the levee would do more than cancel
our afternoon plans

tear down the pecan trees
and leave us bored in your
grandparents’ house

when they fled for higher ground.
your bartending friends forgot 
to send you home at night

the sirens grew loud, bright
at night, growling animals stalked
the fence posts knowing i was foreign

no matter how much i wanted 
to belong to a city full of poison
my body loved to drink