Incarnate

Balm: as in a handsaw taken

to dying branches; my mother

when she prayed us cut the air

off, those final gasps the purest

she’d ever known; as in that time

the doe the dogs left living by a thread

leaned that thread into our bullet;

as in the unnamed herbs my wife’s

grandmother swears held her head

sweaty & adolescent, but upright,

astral, cradled by the only kind of arms

the internment camp had to offer, that

child-size tea set she smuggled through

a half-century’s worth of indignities

that now rests on our mantle, chipped

from our own children’s violent whims,

themselves the balm, those missing

wedges, those unspoken memories;

as in the aged neighbor who just handed

me two rolls of toilet paper because loss

means something different when the whole

boat is sinking; as in my gratitude, my selfish

gratitude for everything I haven’t had to steal,

the shreds of light that makes this loving less a cage.