The space inside, glass-
veined, waiting for dry stems of
milkweed and their shadow-
colors, in a room I have
lived in all my life, or it could be
filled with wind from
the open window—phrases
said aloud and soon
retracted, violet folded
into dawn and also
great rents of noise. Someone
I loved, someone I only
held on to, and bits of earth
and straw, the lakes there wasn’t
time to swim in, what I
never risked, and mistakes
of all shapes though the
vase is not large, seldom
apart from craving, and hope
and loss. To think
nothing of it until the glass,
an accident, mostly
fractures, fallen from the
shelf. And who was I
then but the space that had
always been around me, never
not touched, the end, was it?
of my distinction, having
worked so hard to separate
myself, to distill, for decades,
who I was, vessel, given
in in reverent surrender,
thinking always of the world
that let me stay this
long, the branch of
air I become that is the room’s
air, and the meadow’s.