The boy from the apartment below yours writes you letters about the birds and calls you a sunset.

“Tu sei il sole del mio giorno.” You are the sunshine of my day.

I break down in the supermarket grocery aisles

because I only have five minutes to make the choice

between a variety of granola bars.

I won't remember this in the morning. The way her arm feels wrapped around my shoulders. She is helping me into the car, her car, which is red like mushed up cranberries. The last time I ate cranberries was when I was seven.

mango juice drips from my fingers seeps into the brown dirt dirt that holds roots that reach across countries roots that stitch together centuries roots that spread and cannot be confined mango juice drips from my fingers plunges to the earth earth my mother raced across earth that felt the weigh