on quiet walls


   my mother sends a postcard
   to my old apartment:
   she's in South Dakota, and it's hot, she says, 90s, and I hope
                                                  summer in New York is well, and I'm proud of you. she waits for my phone

calls in sequences that make my
      heart drop —
         not quite like a gong, but
       a raindrop waiting
     to reach the bottom
              of a car window

        I think I want a house someday,
              where swarms of night moths
        scatter inside the same
         porch light as hers
              and marble reflects like a mosaic
       on quiet walls
   and I'm using the same porcelain
              teapot that
        wakes the kids when it whistles

   and anyways, all flesh is grass, she says, the backs of my ankles don't bleed
                                                   and that's really all I could ask for
   you should visit Sunset Park, I say, and I'm embarrassed because it feels like I'm begging,
   (and I used to think my window framed the airplanes perfectly but maybe they were just passing by)

        but I'd keep her old slippers
             in a woven basket
      arrozcaldo on the stove
                       and maybe gold
                       just to count,
                       just to keep.