Broken Periodic

No one who has ever had a childhood 
wants what’s happening. No one 
who has ever wondered anything: 
where the rain’s headed in her steel hooves. 
Questions wrongly put swell 
like moths under a light. On the streets, 
everything looks human. You forget 
certain animals are bloodless injured. 
You must imagine some other color 
that means hurt. At night, you sleep 
with something like your gifts: to anguish 
and ascribe a language, music.
To slice a fig the long way and linger. 
To grieve for a country.
To grieve without a country to grieve.