( after Prince)
I punched a hole in the roof
to try and remember
how to breathe.
And, keen on sound
listened for voices
to guide my lungs
to repeat, repeat.
My heart is a record skipping,
needle stuck in the wrong groove.
Or maybe it’s a cassette jammed
in the deck in a dash in an old car.
We listen to that song forever.
Or I do.
That song with its broken rhythms
—that’s just how it is now.
And I look up through my ceiling-hole, shingles falling
onto bloodied knuckles, stars overtaken by clouds dripping
rain onto my bed and I wonder if this is what it feels like
to say no every minute of every day if this is what it
feels like to let my pigeon wings get wet and stay wet
because there is no such thing as shelter.
Rain is wet
and sugar is sweet
and, between you and me,
I am too tired to dance, to clap,
to look beyond those clouds.
maybe I need them. Maybe
I need this hole in the roof,
these broken fingers to
remember the flowers
the elephants
the miracles
of my own declaration
just yesterday.
I put my hands to my mouth and lick out the splinters.
It hurts.
Like my womb,
my hips, my eyes, my neck.
And tomorrow when I cry
in the shower I will
remember the hole
in the roof in the sky
in the world and know
that rain is coming
like sugar to wash
this all away.
Alyss 