margin

i keep a notebook the way



you keep a wound clean —

daily, without expecting much
every sentence arrives



already a translation

of something i can't get back
i write mother and the word

sits there

fully clothed
i write want and it lies

the way a photograph lies,

flatly, in good faith
there is a version of this

that would say it

and i keep circling it

like a house i used to live in
i have learned my pen

can only hold so much —

it spills at the turn,

it always spills at the turn
still i come back,

press until it gives,

and let myself
mistake the pressing

for arrival