Here and There and Everywhere all Around Us

It took trains of waiting—

we unpeeled so many oranges

that we became used to biting

through the rinds with our teeth

rather than using a clean knife.

Our noses grew so cold on windows

that we were all touched red at our tips.

We found different ways to say tragic:

we’re running low on soap and apples,

I have it—it’s worse than I thought.

We spread more bad than good.

How could we not? We’d begun

to breathe grief like air—invisible

but there til it tuned our bodies to bottles

holding only warbles. Sounds worse than static—

so stuck inside our own murmurs

that we couldn’t hear the other tragedies.

And even if we could—would we have chosen

to listen? You must understand:

we were just so sick of bearing witness.