Because no one questions why
she runs circles around a parking lot

to get another glimpse
of the albino squirrel.

Because a mysterious catlike creature
with a raccoon tail darts between cars

on a moving freight train, flies
across the trail into the woods.

And with the Washington Monument
in the distance, she asks a stranger:

How worried should we be?

And the dead bee
on the windowsill.

Because she can’t remember
whose father burned hedges

with a torch that was more
flashlight, less spark.

Because we wobbled, and they
were waiting for us. And some other

hero flies so high into the cotton
ball clouds without wings

to weigh him down. Because she searches
for a loophole in the pergola

where logic has been flattened

into nitro cold brew cans
waiting to be recycled.

And his arrival time has changed.
Because he’s due to invade

her mind in three hours—not two.
And reshaping brows of mountains

into 45-degree angles
does not equal the distance

traveled to reach the light
the night before he died.

Because it’s not what she thought
it would look like. Because a man

tells his lover he’s going
to take more pictures. Because

their eyes were lit from within.
And all the saints were wearing

the same international orange robes
with black silk sashes. And

it’s almost as if the morning could
calm phantom desire.

And because she says she belongs
to it.