STRUCTURES

I was taught how to love
The way cut flowers spill

From countertops onto the kitchen
Floor as if each cut flower were bones

Of winter and each blossoming
Were meant to be examined,

But only at a distance. We learned how
Words explode from our mouths

And that our lips kiss every time
We say, please; how they could cut

Like winter chills when we said,
Leave. Our ruined exhales

Cherished each other.
I know the flattened bird on the street

Cannot nest toward morning,
That everyone sits with knees cleaved

Tight to their chest in the shower,
And some days I forget

My cigarettes in the kitchen counter.
(How useful of me to escape

Into day as violently as falling
Asleep and knowing

The sun waits for no one.) I learned
How much weight it takes to fall.

I built a bridge out of toothpicks,
Assembling many small triangles first.

Gluing them together, I constructed
My Warren trusses.

Each triangle ached for something greater.