Concatenation

On the night I left home again for the winds

of the desolate prairie, I sobbed in the study lounge

for 60 straight minutes, facing the wall so that no one could see,

wailing at God — something that more people do

than the world wants you to know — God, by the way,

who could see. God, by the way, who knew a lonely freshman

when He saw one. God who saw the way temps were dropping

outside, who saw the girl with the wiry legs, the girl

the boy had left behind, shaking her head while snow

piled up on Lake Phalen. God who made a world so full

of paradoxes that physicists, theologians and writers alike

would all blow their minds trying to reconcile the world

with itself. Writers who would then find the greatest paradoxes

not around them but lodged deep inside their rib cages. Writers

who would think, think, and overthink, who would let

the gift of fire slip through their fingers for fear of injuring it,

who would sob in the study lounge for 60 straight minutes

trying to reconcile themselves with themselves.