The world sounds lovely over my left shoulder.
A dog barks. A bird is chirping. The white rush

of two-ton metal trucks on the asphalt. 
I am learning the congiuntivo tense in Italian.

I am expressing uncertainty, hope, my own opinion:
the sunlight is warm. The world is large and full. 

Birdsong comes from a luminous knot
of spastic joy within fuzzed, apricot 

chests. God is. You yourself exist. You’ve always 
felt it over your shoulder. No? 

But look: I used the –ia form of the verb, and not the –ie,
so there isn’t an argument. You can’t object. The sunlight doesn’t dictate 

shit. You hope, then fight against it, then pull shut the blinds but
you love yourself in at least the fatalistic sense and can’t deny that something lovely

hangs in the air— that certain knowledge isn’t it.

***

Photo by Annika on Unsplash