immunity

what makes my rhythm—maybe
the way of poison, a bright

color against
the whites and grays

like living by once

how deep sunk the hand
in my head when loved

young and impressed or

how blue the sky bled
aside the clouds and so

stared into an emptiness—are
my notes sharp now on the fall

because i have loved
broken things too much

that love hard or are an absence

and prefer the rain that informs
where a self begins and that of others

must end, not the fuzzy line

mind a cloud and the
blue everywhere—not my self

so tricky
when it is familiar—
an emptiness that allows

things to pass through
like—who i am—same

a cloud pushes the edges
of the sky in shifting.

i dance on the flats,
the way back up

a stumbling, happy song

wanting to stay with
old friends and the ones

i said i would love, and not forget

how mom would only pat
me on the back but never

hugged in private though
she craved me

never like her father craved her
shrinking—she loved her child, same

my friend sung in the driver’s seat
going nowhere loved nowhere

and chose it, she tried to
choose. and like my

father’s books—his
very eyes a tunnel for me
that held the exit—i am

unwilling to be at mercy but
full with it, shifting through
empty spaces that will

push—this very rhythm,
an antidote.