Invitation

It was not given me to write in the primary colors.

I did not recognize the 350,000 species of beetle.

I loved what was spare but could not draw it.

My luck and errors equally mostly escaped me.

My eyes faltered, but found their way to different windows.

The fate-souk bartered my shapes and sounds between stalls.

When the keyboard offered an incomprehensible symbol,

I reached my hand out, as if to a Ouija board’s invitation

or a stair’s polished handrail—because it was incomprehensible,

because my hand could add its own oils to that railing.

This poem appears in the July/August 2022 print edition.