Every time

On why every time I read the news I hear the phone ringing telling me my mother is dead; why we have to care about black men being killed even before they come back for the jews again; why every aching grief echoing behind an unnecessary loss is keening, a constant toll at the backbeat of my mind, these days:


I remember the crash
the sound of many things falling
a low thud of flesh hitting the floor
although I was across an ocean, I felt
this coming apart felt it all
rock and heave, all the boxes we had
so carefully, so fearfully
stacked crookedly up 
lining the walls in our broken home
to make them thicker maybe
we need this for sometime, keep
stashing more hidden behind doors


There's something about it all being over
that makes the reckoning easier
maybe easy is wrong, rude even to say
but inevitable
breaking down an old shed once I pried out
the bent nail holding the whole damn thing 
and watched dessicated boards buckle down
topple under the rusted roof, snap old struts
this is our inheritance


And I can't stop thinking about that feeling
the sick snap inside of things
falling apart, the center (which was never
true) cannot hold, and everything covered
in a fine dust of we're fine fine it's fine
shaken out, beaten til the particles rise up
lit in a sun beam, a dancing devilish whorl
of all the layers we've trudged through