Danny, with the bad neck

First a tarmac, strangers deicing plane wings

my father at arrivals, a worker yelling sir

as he leaves the car to come hug me

then we’re driving & he’s telling me

Danny’s not really alright, how he fell into a literal hole,

how his neck snapped

But listening I can’t stop imagining

you sitting on the side of the bed

while I crawl to your body pointed north, the way you like it

In her bedroom,

my mother’s rolling newspaper

to keep her leather boots from bending

I kneel on carpet

wishing it could be that simple to upright me

But you’re in the middle of the country, making paper,

grits sifting water, your arms with milky slivers,

your sleeves rolled up

My mother puts her feet on my feet

Later, cousins come over

talk about construction on the bridge, the scaffolds which hold them

over an edge, how there’s no way they’re going to finish

before the real cold

with Danny gone

I could never take you here

watch you stand shoeless in a kitchen while my father judged your hands

No, you’d linger at the door

No, you’d look at me like one of your lined objects

faced in the wrong direction

I don’t know

how a neck can snap

& not kill you

But I know that people are made like gutters

& from gutters

Days I made myself a mile marker

Slabbing distance moving west

moving more west

Where I watch you with the gray pulp & your back turned,

mushing fiber raw

sitting in the apartment with the landlord’s cheapo heat lock

you unbutton me in someone’s old jeans,

flicking me in the dark until I tell you a secret