It’s dawn-dark on the left side of the map. Breakfast milk lurching
in a blueish mug. My twin and I wake each day with one shared shadow
only half-purposely. Mother standing in her mirror with her red-dyed curls
her red-eyes. Today, let’s wear our American T-shirts. Lost cotton things
in the bottom-most cubby, one goose-blue / one heathered. Both flags sequin
and pixel. In our plastic concussions we see nothing beneath the marine layer
but fog: preschool smell, the softness of our arms interlocked, green fields
hung over the choir-room carpet, cut-out paper roots razored with safety scissors.
The car hums orange with its ripped-out radio, wet windshield, both of us silent
in our smallness not because we know–– we keep a secret from our other life
the one where nothing happens. We walk squeaking through the hall shutting off
the gray screens, the reels. Mother smiling but not with teeth: her palms flexed
— heavenward.