Some Things Will Never Happen

waiting outside in the hall
where my friend’s orchestra practices I hear the choir

of Glendale Community College cantillating
gratia plena           rehearsing its harmonies

over & over & it has not sounded perfect yet           on the beach
earlier I let the sun burn

its music into me just a little
let my body relinquish half

its whole note of winter coldness           I lay in that brilliance
too long thinking how I do

not know if my flight tomorrow will reach for
land gently or if I am at an age

to reasonably believe
that some things will never happen

to me that the plane won’t burst into flames
I do not believe he ever will

but sometimes I think I wouldn’t mind being hurt
by the man I love if it made me more sure

of the war in him & this also seems like something
only someone who is young or wrong would think

last week my sister dragged a woman
from a smoking belly up SUV

while two men stood at a safe distance & watched
the woman waited in her blood

& my tiny sister
five foot one & one hundred & ten pounds

wriggled her like a newborn through
a window before the vehicle caught fire

in shock she blessed my sister & prayed
to Mary & the men

murmured amen           there is still sand in my ears
my hair my shoes my teeth & eyebrows

& I have been trailing it all
day like blood as if someone following me has need of it

as a navigational aid           when my man says never
I believe him        when it comes time for me to be full

I want it to be of grace & I want to sing gratia plena &,
I want the dissonant chord & then I want it

to coil like a tendril like a muscle like a fist
& stay motionless