Ode to Resistance

“I did not fall from grace.” - Ansel Elkins

I’m trying to be content but today 

I’m having feelings about us. 

I rehearse hitting the high notes. 

I google: how do I know I’m happy 

in a relationship?  Yesterday, we visited 

the farm-to-food market. All this time, 

I’ve been saying to-table, a body 

with four legs, even if it knows how

to beg. I swear I hear wood when someone 

says mother, when I bleed monthly 

for an ex. I feel most useful when 

my gyno warns, You can still conceive.

I’m trying to be burnt enough,

ready to rise through love but I can’t

move forward. I want to abandon my trust

issues, but I’m enamored with flames,

how it colors me hopeless: red, gold, go

figure—lately, I retract from your touch.

▲

Circa

What do you call the stretch of time between dead-end searches and declaring something has gone extinct? What do you mean, “Is this a metaphor or a joke?” A mayfly begins life with no mouth. Isn’t this how we love? You needed someone and I needed to laugh. I mean, someone’s been combing the Panama forests since 1972, confirming the splendid poison frog—the Jalpa salamander, Hawai`i yellowwood, the fresh water fish in Lake Lanao—are  still missing. Years from now, Can I have them back, is the question I don’t want to ask myself. Isn’t it odd that I know jugabilis means “that which may be joined” of the O`ahu petral that’s been MIA before anyone knew its soft bits, its four-chamber heart pumping blood to lungs, pumping silence to acceptance. I’m trying to wrap my head around this femur, the bone color clouds of marriage.