before the nights we spent enameling / this reflection in my eye, my mother / danced on a fire escape / limned by black fire, and you / glowed bright with the silhouette of a camera.

First you have a fist,
the same size as the heart, which
came before.

my people die like a poisson process. i listen to the rain count bodies
while the thunder weeps with me.

The coyotes didn’t show themselves, no matter how hard I searched. Some nights my mom came into my room and stroked my hair before I left to search them out.

...I didn’t see this, but I read somewhere
that an orca carried her dead calf for weeks to mourn it—

It is late
and I am alone except
for you and your colony.