Sarah Louise Garrido

Bone of my bone, the phrase

escapes your mouth in a breath

that can’t be kept. The spirit

undoing itself. The moon rowing near,

then far in turns. At the center,

the earth burns. All the things we can’t see

are the things I want to forget.

But I saw your father’s face, his face

and not, undoing anything I could say.

Disfigured, shifted in surface appearance.

They wrapped his bent body

in a white cloth and topped him with a flag.

The moon and all the things we’ve conquered.

Who says the planet won’t drop

from an unseen hand tonight? Who says

your whisper won’t be your last?

A troubled man shouts outside our apartment

in an unknown tongue, the language of the lost.

All the breath everywhere, falling

out of mouths, suffering or not.