i am alive in multitudes. at the same time i am driving my little brother

to the supermarket, i am also boarding a plane to Arizona. this is a life lived

all at once. time runs like a river / these hands gripping the flimsy handle of a suitcase /

these hands on the steering wheel.

please don't tell me time is relative / a shattering thing / because i already know. / the number

of thresholds crossed in a house-turned-home increases today

and i am a mile away, gassing up in the rain. it's getting dark

at the same time that i am almost an adult / i am also a scared little kid fumbling

with the gas cap. today the people

fueling up beside me are women and i am grateful.

at this very second i am thirty-three and tired, but so full of life,

and i am also seventeen, writing a poem in a 9 pm stupor of pastry-fueled urgency.

/ if i do nothing now, somewhere the future ruptures. / splits. /

viability is a liability. better to like girls. / my hair is wet with rainwater, slicked back

boyish. these hands holding the pen are also cupping her face. / time flows like a creek

and i wade in it. it's cold, it tugs on my shoes like a child.

for the first time in a long time i feel alive. / this is the empty bed every night,

the same feeling as lighting a candle no one likes the smell of.

things are different now, we only stare at each other. / let me reach and keep reaching.

these hands belong to you now, and somewhere they also know the absence of touch.

somewhere, / in the before, / i am rollerblading

singing genie in a bottle and thinking of a boy. but also,

he is gone and i am telling him he doesn't know me anymore. /

those things are happening at the same time. time moves slow, like a glacier.

the creeks and the rivers have frozen over. / if i walk on the ice, i can remember

what lies beneath my feet. i am standing still

when the surface cracks / and plunges me into darkness, and somewhere,

i am on the shore, thinking that if i try hard enough, i could walk on water