Your anger arrives on the back of a train

Arrives in my yard. The neighbor’s grass too long, and the city getting interested

I polish your anger as I polish a necklace, silver woman on a string

The city leaves my neighbor a letter. Inside her grown son sleeps

I thought: if I had been a son, someone would have taught me how to repair what I have broken

As it is I polish, take a hammer to your anger to make it my anger, make a silver woman a string

My neighbor’s son wants to sleep forever. And grass the slow passage of time

I want to sleep, but I am too embarrassed by our anger. How it is always arriving too early, always announcing itself

If I had been a son, I would have been given a holster

No one forgives grass for growing. I forgive the grass for being grass

Rebecca Valley
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