I never knew how to tell the difference between tired and sad,

Or at least that’s what mama tells me

So maybe when she fed me at 3 in the morning,

She’d make the decision herself: tired. Sleepy.

The closest I’ve ever felt to God was in that delivery room, babycakes.

Dr. Frank Katz tells me I will be tired for the rest of my life.

I hope mama doesn’t mind.

All I remember of abuelo

Is a wooden banister in Providence

Which apparently belonged to a funeral home

That I guess his dead body was inside of in 2007.

Why Dominicans go to die in Rhode Island, I’ll never know

Or why the son of a Cuban slave was named Jimmy.

Tonight I’m this raw, open thing.

Half of my heart is in kitten heels, under the north wing of Capitol Hill,

Screening calls from constituents, watching little boys play War.

She sits on my California windowsill morning and night

inside of a wavy turban shell she found in the surf.

Something used to call it home. Coiling into itself

against the soft iridescence.

Loving you is like swimming.

Tonight, I am exhausted.

I walked 40 miles in 3 days with 2 bottles of water

with a state issued ID in my brain – that’s what real backpackers call the top part.

Without a baby on my back

With a home waiting for me on the other side.

I did it for fun

My feet bled

I did it for fun.

I walked 40 miles

And after 24, I’d walked the length of Gaza.

My toes turned gray.

I smoked a joint on the ridge and laughed,

my brain free of lead casings and white phosphorus.

I had no baby to feed at 3AM.

No little peanut to hum Elton John to.

No one to pray over.

No rubble I used to call home.

Jimmy, I am sorry you rained fire over Korea

To one day have an American grandbaby who never learned how to go to sleep.