Letter From the End 
of the World	 
The reason no longer matters,
the lamp, my curiosity,
my sisters’ insinuations,
never waking up together,
you saying, “Trust me.”

The point is the end of innocence
comes when you look at someone you love
asleep and see how his eyeballs flicker
under their shallow lids.

The point is since I lost you
I have been going around the world
looking for you and finding myself
instead, small scraps of a woman
that are beginning to fit.

At first the mountains closed ranks against me,
blackberries dried in my mouth,
the wind kept turning to face me.
Wherever I came, the music stopped,
sidewalks opened up manholes,
lights went out,
a pregnant woman shielded her face.

But I learned to sleep on the ground
despite the heartbeat of giant oaks
and the moon’s soft taunts at the sun,
the all-night labor of heaving roots,
the mushroom smell of death.

I learned not to throw the bouquets
the wretched made of their wounds
back in their faces, to accept
tears brought me on red pillows,
to knock on plain white doors
without windows or peepholes, not knowing
whose voice would say, “Come in.”

The point is I came back
from the deep places.  Always
there was help, a man or woman
who asked no questions, an animal’s 
warm body, the itch in my muscle
to climb a swinging rope.

I started out as a girl
without a shadow, in iron shoes;
now, at the end of the world
I am a woman full of rain.
The journey back should be easy;
if this reaches you, wait for me.