alexandria

i watch an orange sky fill in and know

it isn't an orange but only bent light

over the bakery. a bus stops curbside

to spill a small mess of commuters,

time nibbling at their legs, their unsmiling

faces wound around the nail of things.

false breezes faint and a landscape

can't be divided without becoming

something different. i know that holding

joy like an injured bird some left alexandria

to live in desert caves and find the god

of being weak with beauty, but honest.

it’s difficult to admit that when there’s

no part of me capable of breaking

i’m the word meaning the sadness inside

somebody else's tongue and the parable

of the past deflowers the future because

my feeling shame isn't weakness but

the space that weakness falls into like water

fixes an empty pipe by just filling it.