An Improbability of Gnus

It was like you,
sending ducks
and telling me to sweep glass
into a dustpan
in the melted snow on the
sidewalk.

It would be nice to be
something besides that part of society
that plays stiff and proper and
clean and
blind.
I want to look inside,
feel my eyebrows like two wounds forming,
to understand what love looks like without words
or from a wheelchair.

Please become impossible so that I can trust you
from the corner of the gallery,
from the rusty chair in the snow,
from the swing,
from the desk at night.




Quote: Nina Cassian: "Ordeal," translated from the Russian by Impey and Swann