& the glare of moon stitches a nightmare to the wet of my eyes.
I envy the violence of time—how the clock hammers through seconds.
The room rebuilds itself back to beige painted walls.
I left my father in the desert under a mesquite. His lips signed
by the sun. Drink. Hands me a mason jar & water slowly fogs
beneath an old rusted lid. His breath a salt lick close to home
yet far from god. A lizard on a piece of petrified wood swallows
my passport & grins. Father stares down my small body & inhales
the fear out my eyes. & an exhale of canaries flood the sky. They sing
a mother’s voice & disintegrate into the clouds & their surrounding
blueness. A wolf leaps down a cliff & morsels the last yellow bird to brush
the horizon. All fear in his belly—I can hear it peck at the dark, tunes a sorrowful
prayer— a call to my father. In my hands I hold the skull of a wolf.
I wake & in my palms a honey crisp apple.