Our being here together is the night-struck violet
plucked from an edge-blue curve of air.
The light does not absolve us.
Because we named our children
in the margins of a garden’s darkness,

the white rose listens.
I love the thousand shades of you.
Every morning, our daughters sleep beyond themselves
in dayglow. The house grows quiet in their wake.
To the place where you should be

I lash the ache of every brightness
I’ve disfigured, the years that we have left.
Bury with me the bottom half
of fenceposts in the yard. Pack the loose dirt harder.
These days, I’m beginning to believe

that I belong here. Because we chose
to raise our children in the center of an empire,
the low grass glistens in the west-
wind. At night, the sky-edge finds us staring at our hands.
It is easy to forget we left a world for this one