The earth heaves, the ice cleaves. Erosion
cuts the heart from every stone, while every night
I watch you drive your family past a starving glacier, turn
from a truck laden with salt. You head off
the head on, take the bumper to the heart, leave
your family straining your lungs’ last
words from the floor of the minivan.
I’m on the floor beneath my desk, straining
to plug in the phone that I will blame for years: why
did I plug it in? Every night
I watch the driver’s stoned eyes, petrified as your broken
daughters in the back. Every night
I piece you all back together: brake, I say, turn
over and over while the glacier leaves
its terminal moraine. I gather the stones,
offer them to the moon, last witness
to your last turn. I turn
to your wife, try to face her head on
with what the earth knows:
core to crust, mouth to lung
the rupture comes, the rupture
stays. Every Christmas
she wakes to the words
brake, turn.
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