It was a sharp noise
before my sixth grade teacher
told my mother I needed
to find my own to survive.

A click, a clatter,
a crackle, a clink,
not a clunk.

Will the beautiful people
return when this is over?
Will a new circle be drawn,
this time with a curb cut

to spill us
onto the street
where everyone can begin

to believe
in their own beauty?
They say I wasn’t looking for a party
in the Bertram Woods Branch.

How do they know I wasn’t
dancing in the aisles?
Maybe I did bring in a detachment

of imaginery friends
from the town before to join me.
I wasn’t looking for beauty.
It found me spine-in, signatures flaring.

Just do it.
Turn your entire home
library inside out.

Believe in your body’s motion
+ spatial memory
more than the triggers
of a flood of titles draining

downward. Embrace the beige
+ decaying post-its
(flagging the not to be

forgotten) exposed.
Go ahead—forget.
The imperative will out.
Spring comes to hint

at the moment
it will be safe
to rejoin the herd.

37 or more
decamerons drape stories
like silver webs across empty stages inside once were live venues.

And I whisper, afraid someone will hear:
What if I don’t want to leave
this sanctuary of solitude.