it would be the distance between me
and the small insects who do errands
coming through the loblollies,
the tough blue bird
on the telephone pole
and how he makes the mountain
behind him seem glued-on fake,
maybe just myself in the mirror, it would be
that one shoulder slopes a little down,
that I always forget which one
(because it’s in a mirror; because
I forget things that require direction,
like which way to turn the window cranks
or put the toilet paper)
or that one of my sad things
is to be accustomed to fear,
to birth it and room with it,
like when I read about Great Diseases
in YA at the library and
convinced myself, for years, and so silently,
and with great passion,
that I was dying of Lyme disease,
mostly that the only way I can escape the air
is by enumerating the vegetation,
pulling each up by a floss of name,
bright shocked aisles of trees
mountains birds flowers roads,
assailed with my names,
lacquered, punch-and-judied
and that the landscape out this window
leads to really nothing, in me,
is all objects I can categorize,
in the most basic of ways, not
in new striations,
new vibey colored folders in the room of someone
who’s happy about it
