The Rules by Leila Chatti

The Rules

 

There will be no stars—the poem has had enough of them. I think we can agree

we no longer believe there is anyone in any poem who is just now realizing

 

they are dead, so let’s stop talking about it. The skies of this poem

are teeming with winged things, and not a single innominate bird.

 

You’re welcome. Here, no monarchs, no moths, no cicadas doing whatever

they do in the trees. If this poem is in summer, punctuating the blue—forgive me,

 

I forgot, there is no blue in this poem—you’ll find the occasional

pelecinid wasp, proposals vaporized and exorbitant, angels looking

 

as they should. If winter, unsentimental sleet. This poem does not take place

at dawn or dusk or noon or the witching hour or the crescendoing moment

 

of our own remarkable birth, it is 2:53 in this poem, a Tuesday, and everyone in it is still

at work. This poem has no children; it is trying

 

to be taken seriously. This poem has no shards, no kittens, no myths or fairy tales,

no pomegranates or rainbows, no ex-boyfriends or manifest lovers, no mothers—God,

 

no mothers—no God, about which the poem must admit

it’s relieved, there is no heart in this poem, no bodily secretions, no body

 

referred to as the body, no one

dies or is dead in this poem, everyone in this poem is alive and pretty

 

okay with it. This poem will not use the word beautiful for it resists

calling a thing what it is. So what

 

if I’d like to tell you how I walked last night, glad, truly glad, for the first time

in a year, to be breathing, in the cold dark, to see them. The stars, I mean. Oh hell, before

 

something stops me—I nearly wept on the sidewalk at the sight of them all.