There was a time

when nearly everyone shared a knowledge of what the Bible said and an ignorance of what it meant.

A face in profile

is like a folded wing. A sleeping face is a dry riverbed with the faint sound of water somewhere below.

and its occupant insists on throwing stones.

I’d come in, sit down, and make myself uncomfortable.

and a face forgets how to go blank, trapped in a permanent facsimile.

the moss grows fat
on the milk of clouds

bare branches turn
green again

not because of its height in absolute terms but because of its distance. It stands apart—but also in the way. Its roots go deep.

and didn’t know it. I had a cellphone-shaped hole in my heart.

a life sentence for its strip of land. But sometimes it glows, livid as a scar.

Over the next four years, some words may freeze before they leave our mouths.

as if time and weather were condiments.