An Argument Against Time

Once I couldn’t complete sentences. Once

I almost got a sentence—forgery, uttering,

& a third charge I’ve since forgotten (the years

do that). I used to wash my bruises in strangers’

kitchen sinks, I used to ask warm water to dissolve

me, please, already. I’m somewhere else, now,

sleeping in clean sheets, making my bed

where I want to & not where I fall. But, listen,

the body remembers—we all know that.

What I sometimes forget is that the mind

& the heart & the rest of this headless world

remember, too. Hush. That’s the sound

of a tree growing rings, that’s the sound

of my feral reaching out & up, calling to me

not as a branch but as the roots— that’s the sound

I make when a man walks in & out of me

& I think, oh, & I feel it, I feel me.