Your father, his father, and his before that, your mother, her mother, and all the way back have kept a tradition by chance or by will to each have a baby (or several) until…

these small hearts these late nights we crunch sand they fly kites

Jesus died in diapers

She's coming back to me now.

Golden arrows that used to point forward, left or right, spin directionless on what used to be empty white walls.

Any God we could respect/ would listen, kind, to prayers,/ compassionate but resolute –

The old man is dead, body propped in its cart like the dead El Cid strapped on his horse by Jimena to save Valencia, and yet...