Lottery & Deciding When Enough is Enough

Lottery

Today’s mood is an unreliable blue.
With my mother, I don’t know where to begin.
Maybe with how she says woosh instead of wash—
the blankets she pulled hot out of the dryer to cover me.
She wanted to be lucky—
notebooks full with figures and grief,
her gambling to become someone who has something.
She tells me her birds have come to visit her again today.
One pecked and chirped at the window where she sat.
It’s your brother, she says. I don’t disagree.
I’m not sure what makes me sing, or when I stopped.
I think about the fractured robin’s egg on the patio, still.
How it was there and then an hour later, not.

Deciding When Enough is Enough

A song splits open from heartbreak.
In it, a small capsule of courage, deep blue.
The world holds against its better judgement.
His heart beat nine summers, until his lungs
shallowed into small fish gulps, gave out.
For someone, I will lower my defenses—
I’ll be as I was always meant.
Something that resists a name pushes out,
like thorns having their use—that to tear through.
Rainy night—does it think it can blot me out?
A moment was taken, and some of me, too.
Let it loosen, I tell myself. Then, let it go.