Easy light storms in through the window, soft
              edges of the world, smudged by mist, a squirrel’s

              nest, rigged high in the maple. I've got a bone
to pick with whoever is in charge. All year,

I’ve said, You know what’s funny? and then,
              Nothing, nothing is funny. Which makes me laugh

              in an oblivion-is-coming sort of way. A friend
writes the word lover in a note, and I’m strangely

excited for the word lover to come back. Come back,
              lover, come back to the five-and-dime. I could

              squeal with the idea of blissful release, oh lover,
what a word, what a world, this gray waiting. In me,

a need to nestle deep into the safekeeping of sky.
              I am too used to nostalgia now, a sweet escape

              of age. Centuries of pleasure before us and after
us, still right now, a softness like the worn fabric of a nightshirt,

and what I do not say is: I trust the world to come back.
              Return like a word, long forgotten and maligned

              for all its gross tenderness, a joke told in a sunbeam,
the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business.