for thirty-
seven minutes
i watched the day
break blue across
steelyards
yesteryear forgot
while recounting the names
of my ex-girlfriend’s siblings.
i imagine this
to be the kind of forgiveness
a tree
must be capable of.
there is, in fact,
a tree just outside town almost
not worth mentioning
if not for the story
told to us as children in cribs
sucking appendages
new to infant mouths,
those eager
seekers of knowledge
when we knew
so little, hell-bent
on offering entry
to each thing encountered.
the tree, however,
we knew nothing about
for we had not
put it in our mouths, and so
our mothers told us all
about its knobs and knuckle-
boned bends buckled
over xylem and phloem
contained like casts
or casks, passing
elevator cars in opposite
directions, i knew why
before i knew why. objectively,
i’ve been writing you these poems
because i do not know how
to speak to the dead.
and what would i tell them?
of whales
bound for some north
passage only whales
must have heard about
in some story
told to them as calves,
coalesced beneath their craniums
and encased in gray matter
like years within bark.
let’s hope by now you understand
what i’m on about—constellations
of wildflowers so beautiful
you might even stop wishing
to be dead. but, i’ve forgotten
all about this tree by now
in favor of whales
squeezing through chasms
into again-open waters
containing life’s colophon.
i want
to tell you
something about
the doppler effect
and grief—what,
i’m not sure yet. maybe
it’s how on either side
sits a silence stretched thin
by objects moving through
space. how it eclipses
and stays
long after the moment
rushes past. how the most
beautiful woman i’ve seen
this year, or any,
plays a song just
for me
in front of thirty-seven people
and decides mine
is a love
worth moving past
in favor of a love
already passed
and i want to tell her
about the tree
just outside town
filling my dreams
each night. where i sit
beneath its boughs
and call out the names
of everyone already across
the chasm past life’s conclusion
of their own accord—
you my darling ghosts,
you which slow
my heart to a pitch
only sorrow hears.
i want to tell her
your names
and the colors of
your favorite umbrella. i want
to tell her i love
everything
i used to love. like
the wind chimes
we placed
on my grandmother’s grave
or the way it sounds
when a good person
says your name.
i’d tell you once more
about the tree
or the whales
if it would keep
you here
for just another minute. but the dead
have no sense
of time. and i am only stalling.
all this to say
that i’ve been getting sad again
and ghosts give
disappointing hugs. perhaps,
i was drunk and walking
home from a party
when someone i would soon watch die
asked me does love
really make it worth it
in the end?
and i said sometimes.
Joy David is a Ukrainian writer living in Cleveland, Ohio, where they are a geneticist in a lab studying diabetes and rare pediatric endocrine disorders. They are the author of Hibernation Highway (Madhouse Press) and their work appears in the Harvard Review, Colorado Review, 68to05, Salt Hill, Muzzle, Passages North, and elsewhere.