Ceremony of a Relocation in Fall

— after Donika Kelly

The sun reaches through the bare 
window and fingers the cardboard
boxes and wakes us early. 

The boy sleeping downstairs
stacked and carried all the boxes 
inside with my husband. 

Now the boy is lying
in the dirt of a field we see the tattered 
edge of on our front porch. 

Now the boy is an unopened 
box lying in a hospital bed
with a swelling head. 

Now the boy has been opened
— a harvest. Someone lies

with his lung, another with his heart
somebody with his right eye

as the sun reaches through 
the bare. 

A version of this poem first appeared in Lily Poetry Review and on the Lily Poetry Review website.