Each Year I Travel Through

Each year I travel through
Year one:
I pass the line of semis carrying a bridge
just before entering a city named Echo
I wish I knew what it meant to connect, and be connected
So I roll down all the windows and ask the wind,
What are you so afraid of?
Year two:
I keep hoping one day I'll hear my voice travel back to me
Instead, I teach my students how to hold words in pieces
Sound, history, impact, and beginnings
Take for instance, colonized etymology
Colon, body politic, imagine it inside your body--a snake,
Swallowing everything
Year three:
Someone who once took my love
Wrote to me, "love is a verb.
Our existence is verbing"
I said, "took," but I should really say, "stole"
Year four:
I have been undoing ever since
Trying to find my way back to a beginning
So I recall an end
The memory of the year when he told me he wanted to travel backwards
Like an echo, finding its way back to a throat's cavern
I can't remember the exact words he used when he left me
But the flies circled our table like vultures
They sounded what I was too afraid to admit:
This love was rotting.
Year five:
The stench swallowed everything.
Year six:
Remember
From Latin, remamorari, meaning "recall to mind"
The first time I taught poetry, the students kicked a blackbird outside on the grass
I watched them through the window and ran out to stop them.
It was already dead.
But I asked anyway, "Why would you do that?"
They said, "Pain demands to be felt"
Year seven:
Love was looking at myself in pieces
Like feathers on the ground
My heart unfolding in pedals, pulled off year by year
I travel through
And my voice comes back to me in waves
I found words for everything.