“Hope is the small hole cut into the honest machinery.”
        —Hanif Abdurraqib

I have friends who are dying &
there is deeply troubled violence

happening in the middle of the planet.
The sky seems to be heating

in unnatural patterns & I’m not
certain I’ll get to love a child of my own.

But every morning I try this life again,
pressing quietly against walls

that taste of fear while moving plainly
in impossible-to-chart directions.