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They wrapped him in bandages from all three kits. The old man watched them.

Everything white is a white spider. The spider spins regardless of color.

“No one shoots when the army inoculates and hands out money.”

I will leave the pills in their bottles, I will leave the bottles by my bed.

I was the man in her life. I know I’m different now. Now I’m a bird.

Sometimes I wonder if he—my father—looks back on that moment.

There’s no studying for this. I think souls must exist in wanted things.

Charge the ground till it glitters. It was God’s pleading in that rink.

The irreversible ink stain breaking the face of whatever we skate on.

I imagined myself magnanimous, but now I see. I have been cruel.

He drew on time, and space, he drew on his powers, and their sleep.

No one in Lagos slouches. Bravado pulsates through the room.

Virginia surprises herself: she wants this warmth, wants skin and breath.

No woman he’d ever been with responded so unmistakably.

These men don’t ask me to remove my scarf, even though it’s mid-July.

I bought chips from the one open store, but can’t figure out how to eat them.

You know that sex isn’t everything. It’s time to get a move on.

My sister says, vicious as possible, “Don’t you dare try to protect me.”

Tonight’s moon has dropped its shawl. I’m in the yard again, waiting.

The city is lit with all its lights. I’m up in the air. It is yes until I die.

I’m a slave to the question what kind of music would ever dare leave you.

Napoleon, who can say you don’t deserve my allegiance?

In the republic of pain, we bloom ice bags and crutches on limbs.

First a mother puts her child to sleep, then the other way around.

All my life, I’d been shy, and I wasn’t about to change that.

“It’s so unfair being accused of doing something you didn’t do.”

I stay gripped to pine and the sugar of existence runs through you.

That’s how a lifetime passes, closing the wound, a million stitches.

When I speak and wave my arms, it sniffs the air and watches me.

The white geometry of caulk between bathroom tiles—I’m held in place.