CALL ME BELOVED

My headphones broke, large cans like
the ones autistic kids use to
block out the world – just gone and

given up – snapped across
the band and flopped dead
around my neck. so this morning

I had to endure deafening quiet –
punctuated by birds screwing and nesting,
ears and eyes and body cold, stiff and gray

as the sidewalk, but, like the sidewalk
punctuated by spray paint runes left to
map out the utilities – arrows and glyphs

promising richness and intricacy
just out of reach sight and mind,
accessible, invisible, far away.

stumbling through worn paperbacks from college
I realize all my old idolized protagonists
are just cowards, running and scared and

even going so far as to admit it, written-out
plain and black and white, but back then
I was running too and just lying about it

much like I still do. I close the book and stare
out the window while the train throws me around,
feeling small but not finding the same comfort

in the fact that I used to, effortlessly –
like giving up – hiding in dark corners,
behind beards and long coats, big headphones,

too small, too quiet to be noticed and
held accountable, a silent watcher
and wheel-spinner – caretaker of the world.

I wasn’t up for being shaken around the bus
so I let it cut me off rounding the corner,
watching my shadow stretch down the concrete

as the sun warmed the city sidewalk and
maybe thawed me out too. The sun is waking up
into spring, not just bright now, but warm, too –

leaving me skipping between the sunbeams, racing
out of shadows. It’s been a long winter and
I’m cold enough – ever-pale and ready to come out

of hiding and feeling fragile, like the tree buds
hanging stubborn on their limbs (they came too soon).
I remember things are beautiful because they are

so fragile – the whole mess so tenous (a miracle
that it happened at all) and I’m a four-year-old again,
marveling at my newfound place in the world,

tall enough, now, to hang over the stairway railing
and the right amount of cocky to believe I’m good enough,
that kind of crystalline belief I’m beginning to find again –

like unwrapping a gift, small and perfect,
like memories rushing to the forefront
skipping across sunbeams on city sidewalks.