I do. This big boy
sits on the toilet to pee.

Shoulders slouched. Underwear at my ankles.
Sorrow so infinite and long, like the moon

spilling a lot through the small window,
so unlike my mother.

My mother sitting politely in her red lipstick, couch-surfing
her first night in America. Girl so big she doesn’t cry.

My mother washing her feet after her mother’s funeral
steps back into the house a big girl, butchering bones for broth.

The lint pieces between my mother’s toes, cleaned away for good.
Almost like a thought but faster.

When let go, some thought-shaped birds will never find us again. Dead or in heaven
or it doesn’t matter, she said.

Reminds me of when I let go of my balloon as a kid. She told me
to close my eyes, keep walking.

By the way, do you think there’s a balloon paradise?

When I think about balloon paradise, I want to cry. A sky tall enough
to be measured in millennia rather than meters.

In it, many balloons set free by children. Going up like rain in reverse. Over cast.

If big girls don’t cry, they must pee more than me.
I don’t know where else water could go.

My mother’s eyes were dry when she packed her suitcase in front of me.
Told me she was going to find what she was looking for. Told me not to call her.

She must have pissed a lot that night. Startled mid-sleep to a sore bladder,
or drowned in her bed, or not.

A woman postpartum, sometimes cannot hold her pee. The birthing process
can be violent, private tissue between the thighs becomes shared then shredded.

Sometimes I picture my mother there. She does not cry. I do.
I pee and I cry all over the damn place.

My mother comes back years later. She is surprised there is any water left for the ocean,
when all of it is in my childhood bedroom.

She only brings home Taco Bell when she thinks I am being sad. The image of her
gesturing to the kid working the register: What combo to buy for a big boy son?

While driving, she bites then spits it out. She doesn’t get sad America. Too much
on the back of the throat. Like a Jolly Rancher. Say cheese.

I get fat and quiet from the weight of it all. Where else am I supposed to go?

To the bathroom when I wake up in the middle of the night. I follow the trail of clothes I shed
coming home from work. The remains of day haven’t moved.

They pile up. Soft and needy at my feet.

A glass of water watching beside the bed.

I sit down to tinkle. With the big light off, I’m sitting on a porcelain circlet of singing stars.

Ode to the first rain in a faraway land. Many people dancing a high fever.

I’m drowning in the dark draped all over like a dream.

Making small talk with my life—if my mother dies, I’ll cry.

Tucked in bed, eyes closed and pretty in boyhood. Apneic while I snore.

I’m only big if I must be. I must be if I cry.