Or in the naming, lose

our power. I called you

house and light and pushed you forth—

with each new month

you show me I was wrong:

here, you’ve made a house with bones

of cloud. Look now, your darkness is

so bright. Of course,

you’re right—

I call this love. It burns to ash,

and—never bird—returns

to flame.

When the border fell and armies

came, they cut not only arms but tongues.

They opened every house

and muted ears, and when the family

landed on these once again rebranded shores

they found the rocks weren’t rocks,

the bread not bread,

the letters broken, hammer-scattered,

the sky a thing that hung

too low upon their heads.

Perhaps that’s how I know it,

in this language their own

children would refuse—

dziecko, kochanek, matka, dzień—

these things I try to name each day

were never mine to lose.

Poet’s note: “Whatever we name, we exceed” is a line from the poem “Interview” by Eleanor Rand Wilner.