Some Things are Inextricable

The rush of June returns and 
once more it’s time
things of beauty spill out of my 
mouth like pebbles like teeth
tiny and perfect and I’m only 
three years removed from 
psychiatric
hospitalization

but I want a prettier word, a neater phrase, something like

revivification
or
the continental divide

Two years ago the first anniversary coincided with my first 
dyke march and I peeled away from the crowd to buy 
myself pizza and think how it felt to be a dyke and be alive. 
In the hospital I read brideshead revisited and it brought 
me to life when little else would. I had recently shorn my 
head of hair and kissed a girl for the first time and I was 
still a woman but I was not very good at being one. Oh well

June will soon cease to signify 
madness for me, I’m sure,
give it a year, two, three—
I once thought I’d never look at 
my niece without remembering 
how I lay on a hospital cot 
for her first days, but 
now she’s a person all her own.
 

From the Amtrak between Ashland and Richmond

Virginia is for lovers, a truth that stretches
from the appalachian corner to the peninsula 
where I went mad and saved myself from madness.

You can tell me other states have trees, but 
I don’t think they have trees like this—on the amtrak
to richmond I remembered what capacious love is,

and to spit truth in my hands and rub it together
I would have to say that this is home in a way
that boston can’t be.

On the james river I leapt from rock to rock
with my best friend who has asked me to 
perform her wedding. Capacity, as a quality

of being capacious. The mountains here are
just better, sorry, than any others, because
they remind me of truth as love, as vast

as any ocean—and we have that too, 
on the other side, chesapeake bay and atlantic
saltwater, and I grew up knowing that 

this is where my bones will be buried.

The Last Summer I Believe We Will Ever Have

Kiera tells me the humidity in Boston is like
being inside a mouth and that
their IMPORTANT PAPERS are DISSOLVING!
And, I read about becoming a citizen archivist
because soon the boot will come for the face
of anyone whose art expands possibility.
And, Vickie says we should go to the beach soon.
And, I have central air in my new apartment
which I feel a tiny amount of shame about.
And, my mother talks about the supreme court
while my senator calls for court packing
while others claim victory and threaten revolution.
And, revolution doesn’t sound so bad at this point,
but not the one they’re talking about.
And, I miss Virginia like a lover.
And, Meadow and I went swimming 
in the james river, just two 
trans kids enjoying the rapids.
And, I want to move 
to Richmond every time I visit.
And, summer makes me remember strawberries—
in childhood dusted with sugar, in adulthood soaked in vodka.
And, forty-thousand people have been murdered in Palestine because
the thing I won’t call my country will not stop sending bombs.
And, I don’t know how to keep writing.