my roommate is from the plane he walked off

Conor Bracken

of, the seat he sat in for more hours than kindergarten
can count – the hands: without them we just can’t hold
time – the plane that has made him chummy with speed,
a momentary uncle of clouds, an amazingly non-lethal
bullet that hurtled with a whole clip of others until
they all were dropped quietly into the surgical pans
of customs. my roommate is from his detonation, also,
which is everywhere he is. the moment when the atom
split: it’s said we’re all from that, even though a lot
of people were made to be from the nowhere of that sudden
moment and not from anywhere at all. a monument
is from a place it has never seen. I have seen some
of those places, the geometry of gravestones serene,
something the stone moved around in Bedford, VA might
admire. if stone flavors its existence with the tongue
of being from somewhere then the world is as fractious as
it feels; then I am not from where I came from,
which just now was the parking lot where no one fought
over a spot, where one license plate repeats itself
with a different numerical accent, where for a second
my foot hovered between the car and the pavement
and agreed with gravity as if it had the choice.