Tightness in the chest—here’s your Golgothaunder the cross,a hill that riseswith each breath and falls when you exhale.Tightness squeezes the ocean of fish-words,and there’s no home for the pigeon to fly back to.Your place is gone, your land,everything’s occupied, frozen, dead.Nowhere to go back to—says the clock.Nowhere to go back to—says the guard at the checkpoint.Nowhere to go back to—says the doorman.There’s nowhere to go back to—sings an a cappella choir of falsecherubs.And Lily and I sense incense in the air and how an empty pocketvibrates.Here the white fish-phone in my hand curls and stays mum,and I turn on the screen, and answer the call:Nowhere to go back to—they say—but there is somewhere to go.Here’s your yellow brick road across the ocean of the living andthe dead.Just go.
