Pause for breath — from the rush, the panic attack — to BART, to work again.

Shared experience felt in the lapse between destinations.

Monuments are layered onto monuments.

Cement walls of buffed graffiti, all inscribed to her.
Say her name: Nia Wilson. Echoes thundering beneath the freeway.

All signs of grief removed, but the heaviness of recollection remains.

A body full of memory, a mind that wants to erase.

Send me an angel.
I look up to find:

Foundations torn out, flipped; renewal attempted through erasure.

Elements of a place, threads of alienation and devotion used to weave one cloth.

Tread warily through transmutation; stalk what comes to pass.

A home built from shards of glass, its intricate surfaces gleam in the light.
A complicated web, so broken and beautiful.

This summer I found home by tracing the cracks between three jobs in the cities I love but can barely afford.

Steps motivated by an unfounded optimism: that breaks in the facade will give way to change.

Faith in the love of a place.
Held in the weightlessness of knowing that everything must go.