The Tuesday Poem - Turning Thirty

Now you blame no one and nothing

not heat wringing your body

not the crystal ball revealed in your mother’s lung

not the caged mutt

salivating for coming rain like blood

not the cicadas’ sex rattle

or the trees dressed for hangings

not the man who grabbed your thighs to

pull you from an angel oak

not stories of ghosts and first loves

rising over the exhaust of hearses corralled out back

as gray dawn blows out shadows

of leaves across his wood

not the skin you left behind

still feeling

for the first time

you own every move

ripe with loss

as you outlive another death