from Her Book of Difficulties

We live fallen down fallen out and then burned a second time or a third or we are taken mistakenly for a metaphor What sum there Old man in a memory or six or twelve and the recollection unreliable but sworn by A woman still lives still lives who can eat every star and not burn How can that be How not feel it in the air when they go in bushels full or one by each popping off like a button from a shirt We are too wildly unbound We draw the thread through as an afterthought We’re all just rattling cinder and slag Nothing to boast too long on We do not seem—we in no way seem—to add up