You want a mind tight like a drum
but you are given two friends
whose love is over
        and the street
full of admirable dogs moving through
the freezing sunlight
         and if the world
changes
    if it blinks and gathers pictures
you will understand I think
            that it is still
just one long shot
        and that is mostly
how our knowing things will go
              except that
with the captured looking there are shared meals
and anger
     as when yesterday the advertised
man shaved his face at the camera
as if to challenge us to what I do not know
and cannot say
       though I mind this less
than I did before
We survive the end of love
and then one day find ourselves
all well at the movies
          We thump
our hearts and they respond
            It is
surprising
     It is the world not looked at
having changed
       and we are in it
getting ravaged getting calmer going on
And I’ve seen pictures of the moon made
to look like a close lantern
           A sweet mistake
I'm a mistake
      my mind keeps making
all the better
to eat you with my dear

Heather Christle is the author of four poetry collections: Heliopause and What Is Amazing, both published by Wesleyan University Press, and The Trees The Trees and The Difficult Farm, both published by Octopus Books. Her first work of nonfiction, The Crying Book , will be out from Catapult in November.