At last call, she leaned over. I regret leaving, she said. I always have. You nodded, vision blurring with tears, scribbling ink on a napkin: Maybe leaving is a kind of loving.

Writing poetry in times of upheaval destabilizes and dismantles, but it also grounds and connects. It frees us. It’s an art that cannot be extracted from its creator.

Lately I feel like a Hopper girl, face
turned away from the happening, adrift
between birth—that inaugural death—
and after. Mostly I worry my hair
is thinning. Glances in the murky glass
partitions confirm I might exist: real

Even if our minds do trick us, even if we act as shadows
on a wall
blindly unaware of the sun setting behind us,

the earth cannot pause without us. The earth could not be anything
without the sum of its parts