then I was awake, raw, Help turning to
Well or Hey by my needy mind but my
body rang Help, help, remembering August
same street, black bulb of early morning, a woman
screaming, a taxi driver spitting
Fuck, fuck, you, you fuck, my mind unable
to spin it into luck, luck, who, who luck just as
my girl leaps up to the window pressing
her cheek to the glass to make sure, making
sure in her sleep, I don't know of what, but
bless the cheek, tho last night she turned to me
pupils wrapped in fog while I lifted from
our bed You okay baby? but I was up looking
out the window for the scream or Trayvon
or a street made entirely of bodies, a river
I'd have to walk on the next day and float,
almost forgetting in the new day's light how I
stood at the window last night, timeless, searching
for a body to pin the scream and tapping
the glass while my lover turned her bare
back to me, a dark moon, while I was
the precipice from which I hung, while
the silence below fused its bones
and I knew the world was full
of women at windows, that the world
was an overflowing rush of bloodwater
and my breath was where it unfolded
and became, and I knew it was impossibly
possible that there had been no sound at all,
that I'd risen violently from my own peace
simply because I was a woman
and there was a window
simply because a woman
has been her own window for so long
tapping, tap‐tapping
on the glass