Deep in the meadowlands the crickets call the herons like the lost
call the lost while I tip a long red spout into the soil cradling
a fern. The water laps against itself. I wonder if it feels
like skin against skin – like nothing, like everything,
like my friend’s plants will die because I don’t know
the difference. Me and the world, we never could
make our minds up: I love you, we say, but you’re killing me,
and we’re both right. This summer when the deer curved
her freckled head towards my outstretched palm, we both
should have been afraid. Ten paces from the drag bar
where I bought a vodka soda to piss in a toilet
instead of the ocean, she’s eating crabapples
in some expensive backyard while drunk kids smear
sweaty hands on her fawns’ downy chins. That seems
wrong but what do I know about anything? The majesty of her,
I took so many photos, I loved her so much, I felt
so stupid. In my friend’s kitchen I flood the money plant.
The ivy recoils. In the surrounding dark the marsh grass
whispers the wind’s nightly prayer while people sleep, cry,
make love, die, and I don’t know how to get home from here.

My father stares out the window at some crow
or nothing. My mother pretends she’s not watching,
not trapped in the malevolent glow of afternoon.
She holds the freckled cheek of a lady-slipper
up to the light, searching each lip and sepal
for blight or mites. She finds none. She keeps
looking until it’s time for his pills: wake up, ông nội.
He doesn’t wake up. She stops teasing. She begs
for her heart: minh ơi? Minh ơi, are you
sleeping? She calls the last ambulance. Before
he dies, he calls my name. Only the orchids
hear him. I never came.