No Harm

 

Tanabata, tired hands folding waxed paper into

wishes to knot around hollow limbs, foil-bright

cranes under howling hoods.

I am still plating fiddleheads in July, through

heat advisory heavy weather sunscreen salt and

not one breath without the thought of you.

Sweat more than tears rolling down my arms as

I lift them to the sky, longing to reach that cool

river of stars that separates us still. I am caught

in canes of red berries,

I cannot be submerged. But I can weave, warp

and weft, words and winding, each thread a

fragile song whose whispered notes barely bend

a single leaf on the slender bamboo of your time.

I love in shards of glass reflecting, in the blood

that falls, in the way it cuts, unthinking:

lacking in filter, with total disregard for consequence

or the curses that ring in my wake. Śīla,

paper knives and silk, stars and every anxious

breath pulling me deeper, sky and sea. Śīla. 

A stone in my shoe and a weight on my heart.

Śīla. A ragged inhale. Śīla, śīla, śīla.