I keep watching the moment the head jerks back.
The pink dress doesn’t know it yet.
The hand lifts as if to catch God
mid-flight,
but he is a lousy bird.
They say it was the magic bullet,
but I think about the magic *before* the bullet.
What he thought about
when he blinked that morning.
Maybe a sandwich.
Maybe death,
soft as linen,
folded in the corner of the brain like a napkin.
I don’t believe in America.
But I believe in the myth of a man
sitting down for breakfast.
I believe in the way blood finds
its way through silk.
I believe in the way
you didn’t look at me when you said
“we’re not the same anymore.”
Assassination is a kind of punctuation.
What if love ends with a period
you didn’t put there?
What if you’re sitting in a convertible,
and the world gets quiet—
not with awe,
but with aiming?
In another life
I rewind the tape.
I say:
Don’t wave yet.
Don’t trust the sun.
Don\'t open your body like a speech.
We are all
trying to hold our heads together.
Some of us just fail more visibly.