Intervals of Please

“I want to prove to you
I love you,”
I told my stepfather

after he had worked on me for hours
to sign away an apartment I didn’t yet
inherit,

and which he thought
his two sons
should inherit.

Even he was disgusted.
Here I was, shoehorning
beauty

and patience into a counterfeit-sale of love.
And he was
right.

I learned. When called on to say:
“A bomb’s like a box of stars,” I couldn’t do
it:

couldn’t make bomb
beautiful for
you.

You long to relate? The clouds above
Wall Street
are

the same as those in Giotto,
but is that a
comfort?

When you think of the bomb,
even though you pit
your fear