Cento: I Know You're Tired, But Come. This is the Way

When a loved one opens their mouth, our world swells

like dawn on a pond. Have you ever tried to enter

the long black branches of other lives? We give

because somebody gave to us. I don't know

your war or your kitchen table, but peeling potatoes

can be a form of prayer, the song that says

my bones are your bones—up and stuck,

or down and struck. I enter my life

the way words entered me. Some days, all I have

left is a crab claw etching the remains—