Multitudes

[thegaslights]

There is a girl down the street,
stepping slowly aside your passing car,
watching the gravel thrown
and the birds that scatter or stare.
She sits down to empty tables
and hides behind hung dresses,
they shiver with each broken
breath.
 
If police lights catch your eye
will you blink? or think
of your awkward first words or
cultural divides that hide behind
every dollar stretched over continents of grief?
 
I can’t help you.
We used to gather every Sunday.
Some would stare at the stained glass
and some would step into the streets
amid passing cars and sidelined eyes.
 
Does it help to ask for whom?
 
I reshare numbers that bury me
in intersectionality pressed useless.
I sit at my empty table and gulp
down the reams of fear, obligation, guilt
while remembering the light in the fog
of my childhood was a held hand,
with a quiet eye that said you are
welcome here, come back.
 
I sigh and stare.
Where are my feet? or where
are the flashing lights that cut
through galaxies of thought
or minutiae
or malice
to find me
or you
or compassionate and clinical allocation
of hands held?
 
It’s no comfort but
physics, maybe
we all know the billions
less than one.