plot in which you lived …

as if everything else were an origin story
as if the sun ate up each dawn
as if the air floated with grafts of a meaningful, meaningful blessedness
as if the want to live was the want to live
as if in your belly a question sprung
as if the question grew into a hunger
as if the hunger bodied a hardening, then a softness, then you
as if there was a time you walked in on a song getting rid of what you feared
as if there was ever a chance you were capable of lulling yourself to sleep
as if you reached for yourself inside yourself
as if your wounds healed themselves without permission
as if your hands were always your hands
as if each breath were the first and last
as if you accepted your life
as if home was more than a word
as if home wasn’t saturated with a thick-skinned homesickness for another
as if the echo of home, a benign viper, decamped from your mouth
as if there was a home in the beginning
as if your father would remain a father
as if your lover remained a lover
as if your chest was not a grave
as if this grave was not a chest
as if the kindness of this world waded through you, heavening
as if when you looked into the mirror, you saw someone you could love, and murmured, 
           “I am my own sun,” your voice a tender promise, layered with the ripe taste of confidence—
           & then your eyes caught the faded plastic tulips on the mirror’s handle; how they have
           eroded from years of being touched
as if the witnessing stirred like a pond in a teacup
as if your future were a heartbeat
as if you lived