sitting on the floor of the nearest public restroom
you learn to hold onto the arms of your mother, a
willow tree who sings into the toilet bowl and into
the blood of the overflowing sink; flooding for dec-
ades now probably, probably a little too long to be
reasonable and probably a little too much to actu-
ally be substantial. And your mother weeps as her
name suggests. You clutch onto her buds. Wonder
how father is in his little pot of rotting roots in the
tampon bin. It is a public restroom and the walls are
shattered glass; it is a wonder you haven’t left it
yet.

& me, watching from the pavement: staring at your bed
of shards: & me, yawning after school: listening to Glass
Beach while you, the whale, rots: & me, picking at my nails:
surveying our hand like an apparition from the other side.

getting ready for sleep on the floor of the nearest
public restroom: we phase into each other in the
corner of the wall, arms leaking and eyes blank,
other hand clutching onto a widow’s arms as this
one lays still in our lap, we learn under the rusting
sink and feel the water drip onto our scalp, and
we can smell how poorly father is doing in the bin.
the tile walls, once white, are gone glass. We phase
into each other. We phase into each other. we ph-
ase into each other we phase into each other we
phase into each other we phase into each other w
now.