Aliyah Cotton
The Lungs Remember Breath
Hopscotch and scraped knees.
Monkey bars and hands rubbed raw.
Cicadas floating at the edge
of a swimming pool. Sneakers
that light up the bedroom like sirens.
Burning the grilled cheese,
charred crust caught between teeth.
Spinning in circles
for the dizzy forever.
A double-jointed laugh.
Perpetuum mobile. And all this
followed by the Lord’s Prayer,
a whimper crossing the threshold,
like acrobats on a tightrope.
Like honey fermented.
*
My happy was too loud
like the breath of a suicide bomber.
Happy like Hope on my lips.
Like an overdue library book.
Happy like that. Happy the way it is to sit
on the porch in a thunderstorm that smells delicious.
The way snow is born into the thicket
to melt into the garden or hide the wild hare
or write its own obituary. The way grey feels
under a pink sky, lush and knowing.
Phosphorescent. Happy like that.
Like innocent until proven guilty.
Happy like peanut butter on a spoon.
Like a velveteen smile
and a rug burn from laughing.
Trusting the noose around my neck
like someone in love. Happy like that.
*
Death is clean and spoken for.
A white noise aching through the pores.
Like silence and sheetrock caving in.
A chisel that knows
where to scratch and where to dig,
what to take. What to leave. What’s left–
glass agonized into sand. Cool and wet,
it sticks to my hands like passion.
