There Is Hope

I have settled into myself. A sediment no longer clouds
up in liquid bloom. In stillness, I see my particulates.

I don’t know if it’s the same for you. M. tells me no one
should be able to undermine my power, but isn’t power

drawn from the threat of being thrown over? Take
this bridge. Men engineered a line over water to connect

two futures. I walk a bridge toward a future so slowly,
a wisteria tracing the air for animal warmth. I no longer

want to be animal warmth. Rarely does a bridge collapse.
Pedestrians walk with purpose across time, from one

future to another. We line up to our loneliness here,
alone, alive, to see the spectacle of it. The shine of sun

over the surface of a river. Rarely do jumpers die
from drowning. The water is a splitting surface. The fall

another line connecting futures. The body stops at
75 miles an hour, the organs jolt forward and sever.

A man wrapped in soiled blankets sleeps, two dots
and a line slacking futures. The sun shines over the river.

On impact, the ribs break. The surface as hard as the past
we cannot fix. I could have loved you fiercely.

— Featured in Overland (Copper Canyon 2023) and originally published on Jewish Currents

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