It’s about time

you purchased a second ticket 
           to the museum of erasures 
                     in Hiroshima, about time you froze again
                                 before the tangled metal 
                     of Shin’s tricycle
           with glass melting down one side

of your face onto the polished 
           floor. It’s been too long since 
                     you stammered in disbelief
                                 at the photograph of a human shadow
                     photographed to the steps of a bank
           on the darkest day in the history of light.

You need to return to the corner 
           of West Broadway and Park Place
                     and resurrect the pillars 
                                 of absence you and your ex rode
                     three trains from Queens to view
           three weeks after the attacks.

You need to call up the guards 
           in fatigues, invisible rain 
                     of asbestos, tall gray wall of sky.
                                 It’s about time you revisit the bagel shop 
                     where the two of you stared blankly,
           never touched your bialys and lox.

You’ve no excuse for lolling anymore 
           in numbness, ignoring the blue-black thread
                     along the dawn horizon’s seam.
                                 You can’t keep dismissing the dusks 
                     hidden in our long vowels, the sound 
           of wind grieving over autumn leaves.

It’s time you hurried back to the duplex 
           on Butternut Street, past the tenements 
                     with soiled faces, sweatshops with smashed-in 
                                 eyes, where your mother’s mother vanished 
                     into a rare disease, while the man 
           beside her wrung his pitiful hands.

It’s time you held a ceremony 
           to honor the heart that ticked 
                     to a stop after twelve short weeks, 
                                 time to commemorate the half-formed
                     fingers and porpoise brow 
           of an unnamed, miscarried child.

You can’t keep rising to morning 
           ablutions, then looking past or through
                     the people of the street.
                                 You can’t go on denying the truth
                     that it’s better to pass silence
           between each other than empty words.

It’s time you started counting the souls
           snuffed out in a single year, 
                     in a single country, by a single germ,
                                 time you began collecting the names.
                     Already, it is late and you’re exhausted,
           ready to put down the day

and take up the book of sleep.
           Already, an urgent wind quickens
                     along the pavement, making a whoosh 
                                 that scatters pigeons, lifts the flaps of shopfront 
                     awnings and the eyes of a calico stray 
           reading the gospel of the rat in her paws.