you could still pretend for a while. Perhaps it wasn’t even pretend—your body still remembered home as a pause between your third and fourth ribs; remembered an absence of walking across a bridge, in this city you’ve chosen as refuge, and keening the surface tension of water."

“Pies, para qué los quiero si tengo alas para volar?”*
― Frida Kahlo (1907–1954)

The blueprint was hidden under Frida Kahlo's bed, where she rested her feet,
after the accident. Engineers puzzled over the design, knowing not what

do not forget to drag your feet, my darling,
for the road is long and the trees cannot protect you here
and though their hands may urge you forward
look behind,

I sew behind time
and feel too much
in the dusty yard of the seamstresses’ house.
Space fighters scream across the dark dome of sky overhead.

Tell me the story of something ending, she said at the campfire,
The story of something that tastes like vinegar
And crunches like beetle shells between my teeth.

they’d tell me
how much a fox’s honour is worth
without weighing it so why not
steal a boy’s honour
braid it in as
another triumph
bask in this
demonic glory

On this world all the colors are named anew
with each child. I have a word for yellow &

a word for blue, but it will not help me talk
to another soul in this city. We point to

Gods writ microscopic,
we are the children of extremes
chitin-clothed, long-dead spores enduring still,
ghosts of ghosts
a billion years dead

it starts with screams in summer.
there have been signs beforehand—
the trees have started to refuse the rain.
the sky did not submit and coated the trees,
unceasing, in layers of water.

the air smells of brine and night spirits
of bare feet sinking into the orchard’s dark earth
where pink ladies dream standing upright
their old branches like my withered arms