Often, it’s April in my chest, a tremor caught

just before I can say: fuck you

for every little thing you couldn’t do, for the sound

of jars losing their porcelain history on the floor,

the air, charged with your breath

and my breathlessness.

Rage is your only lullaby, and eventually I learned

all of the words. I can’t touch a man without

vibrating, the constant yearning

to knuckle things out of order that you swore

was love. No sense of tomorrow.

Once, in a room with all the noise

of an ailing city, I felt my own heart,

something alive inside me,

threatening to abandon the body that treated

it so poorly. Deep in the vein

of nowhere, I like to think there is a flash

stunning enough to blind me. That I can reach

to find an arm, knowing I can trust what I can touch.

No longer April, and the monsoons

would have reclaimed everything;

every sun that vanished after you,

the gaps in my palms every night I tried

to reach for yours,

and all of your sad wind.

Even us and the equal parts we hate the world.