The sidewalk split open to reveal the dirt

underneath it, the sky sometimes splitting open too,
the way an entire rack

of school supplies tumbles over and on top of you.
We are always swallowing our laughs.

We are always admitting to ourselves
far too late

that dusk is a joke and we are the punch-line. The morning grows biblical
in the dull street-light haze. An orchard.

What sea fell from the sky? What sky can turn from blue

to the pure color of an Asian pear — no matter, it falls too.
Sometimes at the market I forget

who I am, as if lost in a field of corn, not a maze, but it might as well be.
And when you grab my hand — for just a second — I am not sure who

you are. Looking for a mirror
out of the corner of my eye, and out of the corner of my eye,

it is Fall
and like the redbud we planted months ago in the yard,

I am lucky to be alive