an armistice between my dead folks and my delusions

I am a body

of ghost—

haint-kin cloaked

in earthen flesh

learning to see

my Self 

in the unyielding 

barrenness of my mother’s 

front yard.

The salted fault lines

become me. I bear

a trace of invasion

and reek

of a martyr’s will.

A tangle

of medicinal weeds

interrupts my molting 

descent.

Dandelion greens fuzz

up my apathy. A flower

dares itself to bloom

amongst my most quiet

scars.

When the rain comes,

I turn mud in my lover’s mouth.

Something fecund hums

through my blood

And maybe . . . this 

is the living. These 

would-be dead things in

the same place, the same time

that is 

my body. Ours. Not mine— 

unowned and fruited and

poor and black and ugly and Here

with you. I reach

a hand      out the wildness

And catch hold

a soft pulse

whispering:

Together, 

we nursed you

don’t you dare

give up