By Zoë Fay-Stindt

If we must begin. If we must imagine

the confines of our longing. I put your certainty

of sacrifice in a small metal box. You made

the box. You made the metal. The land — red

and lichened by manies — swallows your small

tin myth. We were born in a room. We were born inevitable

with a throat of grace. When I step out

of the room you built, when I turn

away from your tumor and your hurt, I wade

into the lake. She grows a grace

inside me. Minnows feast callus

into soft. The day of your liberation

will be doused in cottonwood seed. America

loves a criminal. America has written

a profitable story. America, we bloom a world

inside you a hundred times each day. C touches the Pacific

and her lip of fog. K is harvesting pears this morning,

slicing them into thick shards of desire with a knife

that has no mother. We wash the knife. We grow sticky

in our living. We write again, again, again: begin

with this fruit in our mouths, our mothers, imagine

enough. Imagine an orchard. Sing it

on in, this certainty of belonging.

Story