His nose presses god-like against the porthole, a mirror image
Of himself racing across the plane. How can a cage

Become a gate? A boy daydreams of being powerful. Of defeating
His Bibi, finally, at arm-wrestling: her oak-strong wrists. The acreage

Of her grieving eyes, boiled & bottled tightly shut, like the final fruit
Floating in Great Grandma joon’s jam jar: Albaloo. Held hostage,

Blinking in & out. They won’t ever taste the same. She sighs. Lifting
The lid of her to let in & out some air. Spiracle breathing. It takes ages

To dream himself a son to a mother. To convince you she visited
Me. Cornered, crying out, wounded. The sliver of sky inside that cage

Belongs to no one. I look down from above as an accident happens on
The free-way. Are there borders, four corners of sky? Crowns interring my age-

Old breathing? Cornices where the walls meet? She gathers me into a city
Cab, gives the driver a destination I can’t make out (the language

Of silence is the only language we speak) corralls my head into the every-
Where between her collarbone & cheek. We’ve grown too vague

For this. If I lift my head, I’ll never see her again. Outside, the window
Transforms desperately. Wherever I choose to look, bodies & buildings age

Into asking, like bits of leather held between my teeth. The doctor
Wakes me, cutting to the sundered bone beneath. It’ll only ache

A bit. He prescribes a white pill, places it roundly on my tongue. Advises
I wean & wane off it. It’s amazing what you can get used to. He bandages

My blistering wound. Says listen, you are new, now light
On your feet, “footless like the moon.” Run swift into this endless age.

—

Darius Atefat-Peckham is the author of Book of Kin, winner of the Autumn House Poetry Prize (October, 2024),and editor of his mother’s, Susan Atefat-Peckham’s, posthumous collection Deep Are These Distances Between Us (CavanKerry Press, 2023). His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Poem-a-Day, The Kenyon Review, Rattle, The Journal, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. Atefat-Peckham grew up in Huntington, West Virginia and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English at Harvard. He is currently a Poetry Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas.