We will always find night again,
how it returns us to ourselves—
tired children lifted from the backseat
of our fathers’ Buicks.
Did you say every line we write is a self-portrait?
Then I am bewildered magpies,
the rectangle pupils of sheep,
the tart persimmon taste of resignation.
You miscast me.
Ten years it took to erase us.
I am exactly unencumbered.
I left the convent with an iron frying pan
and my shattered silence.
I am identical to nothing,
afraid of this new country of old age—
a sad map of unexplained aches,
receding hair, hands too weak to open the pickle jar.
Tell me I can still be lovely as sunlight
framing blue eucalyptus leaves.
