We didn’t pray. We should have.
Instead
we forsook our standard wish
And blew the eyelash for
rain, traded
stars for storms. But
We had no authority even to
want a thing.
It came to naught.
Only under cover
of night,
clutching ourselves could we
remember sinking teeth,
the body’s
slick glide through space
or fingers red and wet from
harvesting
berries that grew on the neighbors’
side of the fence. Those were baby
days and I,
for one, am long since
severed. Now I pour apple
vinegar
into empty wine bottles
to attract the flies and devise traps
for scavenging
rats. We have to make
do. The cures for croup are
cold and wet
and we have neither.
Maybe if we dance.
Maybe when
we wake up in the morning.