If I said red-
handled jack-
knife blade.
If I played for you
a grainy recording
of a switcher’s whistle
moaning
in the distance.
If I pointed
to the Post Road, the woods beyond it,
Brockton, November
eating all
the light,
would you remember?
We are kneeling
in the leaves, Jacob.
I am muddying my knees
beside you.
We are seventeen.
Your mother’s death
between us
like a stone.
*
I am muddying my knees
beside you—
I am watching you work
the knife beneath the scruff
of the bark,
and I am still
in love: your corded
forearms swollen
in the cold,
drained hands
peeling clean the branch—
the grey
of the blade, Jacob, the sky
and the wind, the slip
that opened up an inch of skin
like a butterfly
in the thick
of your palm—
black blood
pooling
to your wrist, the knife just
dropped, forgotten
where it landed.
*
Twenty-eight years
and what have I given you?
A knee to the eye.
A spit inside your grin.
A throat-hold
on a schoolyard court,
our knees gashed by asphalt.
So violence,
Jacob, but tenderness
too—fingers on the neck
of the other, stigmata
of a split
sclera, a whole boyhood
of putting stitches to each other
like time
-marks knifed
into a wall.
*
In my dreams
I see her. Whole generations
are gathering
on the front porch
for a picture. She is walking
through my childhood
lawn. She is walking past
the black fence,
unimpressed.
She is admonishing me
for the mud
still dripping
from my sneakers,
the dirt at my hemline,
my insufficient hands.
I’ve never told you.
And she is whole again.
*
We are fourteen.
We are learning geometry.
We are learning the words
to the Declaration, how to count in Latin.
We are reading On the Road
to each other like a bible,
naming the chambers
of a reptile heart, how the shapes
of flame can change
depending what they burn around.
How a cell shifts.
Toothpick bridges. A night sky
made from a trash bag
tent. Lying beside you
in the darkness.
*
I’m sorry. Electronic
pulse. Intercom echo
even in the stairwells. Twenty-seven steps.
The bar-handle
of the metal door. When I saw the knot
of tubes I thought
of a highway. Her chest swollen
like a sodden log
bobbing in the water.
*
The night you heard
I didn’t answer.
I never told you.
I didn’t know
what words to say.
I never told you.
How silence
slides through years.
I’ve never told you.
The little hole
that opens
when I speak.
*
Weight
on the balls of your feet.
Sneaker toe-box crushed
in your crouch, the inch of air
between your heels
and the forest floor—
tongue and laces,
Jacob, the sky
in the blade, the slip, the blade
in your hand, your breath
suddenly full of knuckles.
*
If you are running.
If you are clutching the torn
t-shirt tourniquet rigged
around your hand.
If I can fix it.
If I am slowing.
If I am turning back
to the forest, tracing
the snapped
branches back, stepping back
again into the beds
our footprints pressed
to the earth.
If I can find
the branches, their skin
peeled pale
as an eyelid. If the blade
is still beside them.
If I fold it back to its hold.
If I am standing in the dark.
If lay the blade back
in your hand,
if I place it—