Before I Was Real at the DMV

Was I ever real enough to see
a hummingbird hover

outside my room
certain that it was my

mother again
enough of a presence for

baby lizards
to leap from the sidewalk

like exclamations
startled by the shadow of me

to gape at a fallen sycamore leaf
big as Goliath’s Philistine hand

with all five fingers curled in a grasp
at the night before and

the past blown away
someone whose morning religion includes

a seagull perched like an asterisk
on the rooftop ridge of the AAA

across from my berth in
the Starbucks next door

a testament that we both had survived
the previous day in an uncertain world

and to landing here
once more this morning

holding on to
identity.

 

 

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