Migration of a Stroke

I.
Today was a day when hairbrush was for teeth
& face muscles scattered like marbles
& all words bottlenecked
mashed sopa de letras at the bottom of the dirty sink
the dishes waiting from the day you dropped your spoon &
everything stopped.

One day you will say you saw your Beloved in the magnolia
outside the ICU window
squawking at you in blackbird
while everyone looked for you
by talking over your body.

II.
Do the trees know their own complication?
The wind shutters each leaf into memory
of individual lightness.
The rain above reminds
of collective heave.

III.
After trauma, the brain recognizes itself
only as glimpses — I want to ask if
you can see yourself hiding.

IV.
The clouds pass,
so indifferent to our ambition.
A bird’s-eye view isn’t always
its promise.
I don’t think vantage point is king
to knowing
in nature — 
lichens see everything we do,
attaching to our wants
and licking up their salt.

V.
How do I translate
the great request of staying
rooted even after
part of you has died?

The semicolon of winter or
the lasting disaster — 
trunks frozen in wildfire
sickled into themselves.

VI.
Burr hole fox hollow:
when there is rupture in
the place we spend all of our time,
the only fix paves
devastation.

VII.
In this country,
I watched you make a place
out of somewhere
you weren’t born, after the drought
drained the land that fed you dead.

How do I translate
the flood of your body,
the blood of your brain’s broken dam?