Separating eggs, words come,
wondering, Are we the right ones?

What should we do today?
Is it wrong that we should be at play
In this strangest of theatres?

Tuesdays grow Dickinsonian:
the hacking and coughing that follows you
down the hallway and carries an umbrella
from time to time may frighten you today,
but will by next week be as charming as
the pancake sun that rises over the backwaters,
casting its devilled egg light on the fishing boat
named for its – your – beloved.

Little Peanut barrels ‘round the corner,
yelling, “PEANUT!” hair and heels blowing
whirlygigs behind her, and always she is
You, sentinel, antidote to grief. I wish
I had learned to draw. Take a lesson:
the children fill their pages with pure cerulean,
shapes and forms without a care for how
the public will greet them. Her crayons splayed
in a rainbow alongside the torn-open box
testify to that, how the imaginary eye
needs lashing, or, as it turns out, care.
Today, I’m aware that if I only remember
You, nothing else has any weight to strike me.
Still, once the breastplate is even half
dismantled, all that’s left is pan-seared,
payasam, the apparition of a jelly.
Magnificent obsessions, comeuppances
at tragic speeds: here we go again,
another agonizer, ‘cept this time
I’ve no beard to keep me company,
no husband, no wife.

No problem. Indians say that all the time,
No problem, but usually there is one:
a misplaced book, a badly wired fan,
some or other seizure that in time
you learn to let go of. But nothing,
in fact, is really tragic. I see the death reel
differently now, in retrospect.

Now parse parsimonious.
Seven cases! And sandhi grids! No problem!
It’s strange: my nails grow just as quickly as
my hair falls out here: parched, outdated thoughts
pouring buckets out of my ears. Are we ready
to open them? The floodgates, I mean,

to veer off

from the should into this new, haphazard,
hazygold territory of no static, no cling?

The apertures open wider day by day, honing your technique.
The path curves, shaded by trees whose names you needn’t ever learn,
just stretch out your hand, and listen.