Cache

I keep waking up in rooms I don’t remember entering,
and each time I am surprised at how much can happen to the body

without its knowing and how much the body holds,
our wounds invisible to us until time does its trick and wraps what hurts

in so much nacre we begin to treasure its iridescence.
I went on a walk the other day and took a new route

because even though I knew I’d end up in the same place, I needed
to get there differently this time. A man ran past me, and I was startled

when I did not hear him coming. I almost averted
my eyes as I usually do when a man’s luminosity resembles

the coat on that pearl forever taking shape inside me. But this time I did not. 
I looked at him as he made his way ahead of me, the thread between us

growing thinner, longer. His back was slick with sweat,
and the way his muscles rebounded from the gravity of each measured step

made me think of God for some reason, how they say 
he was man and how we, somehow, are mirrors of that.

A neighbor’s magnolia tree has begun to bloom, and I can’t help
but walk over when no one is home and pull a branch down to my nose.

In my own yard, a dead tree loses pieces of itself after every storm, 
but there’s something about the way it grew—almost splitting in two

before turning back to lean on itself—that holds it up.

Read more from Issue 19.1.