What Did I Do To Deserve This

by Rosebud Ben-Oni

What if you’re already here and you aren’t here
for us? I’m making excuses. I haven’t the faintest idea

why, say, everything that fits me is still a little too big,

always a little too long in the sleeve
so my cold hands are always warm.

How did this sort of thing work itself out,
while, never mind the season, I’m reaching

for the top shelf, the flag on the mountain,
a ladder’s last ring, friendly hand lifting me,

squeezing onto trains, they hold the doors for me,
as if not taking up too much space is a good thing,

the best thing, few if any hastily cross the street
when I head their way, as if being here I must be

half-step not yet, open-lipped
joyous, a second of time lit

at the tunnel’s end? As if thy neighbors breathe me in

and strangers too and they are just fine
as trains derail, whole families go missing,

sock lost in a laundromat, mere nuisance, forgotten,
move over, kiddo, and so what, and what’s more

we all get a little trigger happy, have our issues, reservations,

party of six, minus one, we grieve
and cross countless county limits

and walled cities to spread wildfire, weeds, virus, preach

always someone else is a demon and the lay of the land
insisting upon itself as how things, all things, stand.

I don’t know where I fit in. I drag my feet
through sodden sand and roll up my sleeves

which still fall into the water, the oil-slick,
tin-canned, six-pack-plastic expanse

in which I’m still making excuses,
asking for forgiveness in endangered

speech, my cold hands growing colder,

so far from whales which know not one world
or two but three— and yet another and can’t imagine

ringing

through the outer spheres that bring you here.
If I ever stopped believing, what would not die

a little, which might not be

just a little, just another day I’m carrying
my bone-dry raincoat over my shoulder,

bunched up, between

forecasts of great storms and hurricanes,
a great flood, the world ending, if you were ever

to leave, if you could not cry for me, if you believed only
in the clouds and the whales, and the dirt beneath

horses’ feet, ants who never sleep
amid the apostles’ catacombs, and fields
and fields overrun with crows and locusts,
even if your most loving touch was saved

for the bones of ancient whales now extinct,

I’d still listen for you

in this sea-leaving
pull I can’t quite perceive, this no stars

breaching the sky, and there’s no sea I’ve left

which you’ve not seen, this
wherever time goes, you and I

one step closer
I’d like to think

because you might imagine what my hand

appears to be

but for my sleeve you believe
this science of leaving

possibility open, out of love for things we render

opening—