if I can still wiggle my toes, and I dance

in my pajamas before I brush my teeth, and I pray

to a different god every single day because I pray to me,

and sometimes I’m clear and sometimes I’m scattered

as the ashes of my friends who were still alive last year,

but there is a test we can all take to find out the future.

It’s called the test of time. And what you do is you live

until you die. And you refuse to let the hands of your clock

curl into fists to fight the lessons off. Even if the lessons

are brutally hard. In all my softest dreams my mother

can still walk. And I am pedaling my bicycle beside her.

ALIENS EXPLAIN WHY THEY ARE VISITING EARTH

Because your leaders

move their fingers

over the buttons of bombs

as if they are piano keys.

As if they could make a symphony

of playing chords around

your children’s necks.

Because if the heart

of the earth is in Arizona,

the Grand Canyon is proof

of how badly it is breaking.

Because we want to pace

your border towns and teach

families the physics of walking

through walls.

Because we don’t

understand why you believe hell

is beneath you.

Also—because we want to

hear old men play Vivaldi

in subway stations in Queens.

Because we want to watch

skateboarders in Berlin

carve the streets

into statues of themselves.

Because we know

kids in New Orleans

glue bottle caps to the soles

of their shoes and tap dance

in Jackson Square.

Because we’ve never

seen anything like that anywhere.

We have so many questions.

Why do you fly saucers

from the coffee table into the living

room wall and insist your sadness

doesn’t exist? How did you come to believe

that hating yourself would protect you

from other people’s hate? What

do you mean when you say

your hearts melt? Are they like glaciers?

Can one person die and drown

the whole world?

Is that what Jesus did

when he meant to do the opposite?

We are visiting from so far away

we thought it was the furthest

one could go until we saw the distance

between two lovers

who had been sharing the same bed

for four decades. We are trying

to make sense of the light-years

it takes to get from one side

of a dinner table to another

when you have buried someone

in the dirt you think they have

on you. To be human, it seems,

is to know your true self

only as well as you know

a galaxy you’ve never been to.

We came here to help you

get there.

CONSTELLATIONS REARRANGE THEMSELVES INTO A PROTEST SIGN

Every uprising has

the universe

on their side.

That’s not a horizon.

That’s the earth

drawing the line.

CLIMATE CHANGE

You’ve been driving in circles all day

on the backroads through the farmlands

where everything is so close to the earth

the silos look like skyscrapers.