You could vanish & Aba says: Yes— time to leave. Rarely now does he cant & don tefillin. No temple to dovetail in an emergency—& still both believe the same reveal. Mama cursing the cures that never stick, not unlike magician’s wax. It’s how a single disease communicates by dissembling the host slowly, gaff & gasp, sawing in half, until a debt of miracle snaps— or falls flat, like cement, without pomp & casket. It’s when you’re too close to the actual act of magic, accidental exposure, that the cool flash of covenants shutter. What are you now, not-child? You’ll owe the universe everything for this trick that, like a virus, attaches only to wipe you clean. Is this why blood falls silent when it’s a matter of  you or me? Or why deep space is accelerating further to rely on a sacred scarcity, & love is already the wraith of dark matter separating planets that will have no one, anyway, not even dust or the most patient of rain? Father. Mother. I’m sorry it took a global crisis to let your love skid & flourish, leaving so little space for a mask of skinned rabbit, ghost count of wild cards shed from torn sleeve. Which part gave me away first, the tremors in my hand, or the numb & limp & my leaning against the walls you’ll restore until dense, until nothing can get in. Was it when I had to confess I could die, just like you, high-risk, if  I went back to the only city I ever loved but could no longer keep me safe & breathing? It took a moment. To look into me without light in your eyes & say, so you want to take us with you.        At first, I mis- understood, reveling in this, the only pure thing to be left whole & wilting—                            it took a little while                            for the other, so calmly,                                       to agree,           it’s time to get                                                                          out, it’s time                                                                                                      for you                                                   to leave                                                                         our place— How long. How long did it sleep. How survival instinct outweighs a house of prayer that was never dealt for all of us, us three silences in a spun of wool, slip of ram’s eye pleading in thicket, wet coal & dry brush amid the wicked. How I am now without past or bond or dream. How the light inside the temple mocks me.