Another y for x

When I think x, I say y, increasingly. 
As in, thinking tables, actuarial,
how long will I live, how much money 
for long-term care (oh god),
instead, I say water lilies.
Pond, sunlight, glint.

Or when I think of perp, unknown, 
more precisely, the one who last night 
bought diamonds at the mall
with my credit card—instead of fuck you,
I say blueberries. From Peru, oversized, sweet, 
in a white bowl and covered in yogurt
from a dairy whose cows still eat grass.

I am, we are, just at the beginning of loss. 
As long as I look away from the snowpack,
I don’t have to know the avalanche 
until the shudder. There is no saving up 
to protect ourselves.

When I think of freezing my credit, 
when I think of these losses:
tigers, coral, civility; when I think brink, precarious, 
I say donkey, warm, innocent-eyed,
winter-furred in aromatic straw—
its husbandry the same for millennia. Just.

Read more from Issue 20.2.