Set your timer. Enter

your mind palace,

any temporary task

to distract you

from the breaking glass,

the chandeliers

fracturing to shrapnel,

breathing in

a cold and spiky effort. 

Tell yourself this will do 

no harm. No—less harm

than a mother in traffic bed-heavy

or three a.m. angry that sacrifice

after all, is umbilical.

Ponder the liquid states

of the matter beneath you,

which is no sign of natural

disaster moving through you

snapping the oldest oaks,

all your inner orchards

uprooted like elephant bones.

You are not holding a live wire,

its current not turning 

your inner workings to ash. 

Pat him. Say there, there.

Make sounds with your mouth 

he cannot comprehend

except to smell you,

to know you are there,

and not there. 

Inure him to doubt, 

the distance from him to summer, 

its vines honeying the air 

from some unspecified fence,

bragging its nectar

with little yellow tongues.

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