The streets are empty-ish.

Ish is for my body, the faithless

and lonely. I head toward

departure. Long one-eyed spectres

hunch over the earth

and each tree has around it

a darker deeper life.

Few shops are open: solitary

yellows adorn a doorway

or two amid dormant heavens

(I call any abundance heaven now)

saying welcome in Mandarin

and later, Arabic.

I move past the beckoning oasis.

I am not looking for a home

all prior attempts failed—

I aim to find the heaven of me,

the we who linger

at stations to hear a loop of human

voices skip over silence

or sink into it, to relish

the ripple that makes absence

visible. We move through

enormity and feel our edges

obvious and crowdless

with the hand of an ancestor, perhaps

brushing the backs of our necks

so we tilt up

to see a migrantory heaven

pummel the sky and disappear. 
Elsewhere, beloveds

gather, ready to unwrap

a gift beneath

the semblance of a tree

or the memory of pine, still green,

and though I have one

a family I mean a queerness

I cannot abide leaving

the city without a body

to trouble its making.

I have no destination

in mind—how sacred it is,

this not knowing, how divine

to walk in this world as an ish.