Domesticity

Sometimes everything hurts with how desperately

I love it, and I do mean desperately. Like I want

to hold tight to every tender object, the gifted rock,

the basketball sneakers. Everywhere, piles

of undone, the tangle of should and will and want.

So many hours blurred to the necessity of sleep,

and how is any corner supposed to stay uncobwebbed

when also I need to consider mortality, love

the word gloaming, tweeze a tick from behind a knee?

How am I supposed to keep safe everyone

in this house while holding open the door

and saying have fun, make good choices, know the world?

Outside the wind has kicked up and the trees shush

even the leaf blowers. The hunger in my chest

could nearly lift me off the ground. Once I thought

domesticity was a gentle trap, a bed soft with quicksand.

Now I know it is a wild place, toothed and flowering.

Unnavigable, and not for the tenderhearted.