Two Years in the Life: My Time as Tacoma's Poet Laureate

WHEN I WILL EAT

here I am. it is today.
I’ve spent the night in a van
parked in a forest in Virginia.
I’ve stolen what might have been
someone else’s firewood.
I’m slowly chewing
the peel of an orange
for breakfast.
I am virtually defenseless out here.
not only that, I am needy.
the trees make me wish
I could fly or climb or at least
jump extremely high.
I want a pocketknife.
I want to hear a river in the distance.
it’s hard not to wonder
when I will eat next,
having lost my way back to the city
so long ago. each day,
I start having regrets around noon.
today I wish I had asked my mother
how she kept her fingernails so white.
I remember watching her
trim the tulips on Easter morning
and thinking, someday,
someday I will know I am grown.
I will only have to
look at my hands.