When is a self its surface breaking.
My boy crushes husks with his plastic cup
 
 
 
and my thought of skin seared down
a middle, and periodic rising
 
 
 
from dirt, tunnels cored along the sides
of long roots. We pull them
 
 
 
where they cling, non-things.
Summer rattles its incomplete arc:
 
 
 
bee balm, flagrant purple, phlox
lineate the patio.
 
 
 
If a child was missing his eyes and wings,
others came with their hands
 
 
 
to guide him. Rocked all sequence
of floors in a dark house,
 
 
 
and fans whirred their sound where
he could sleep, he lay outside you.