Don’t leave, she said to me last night. Her name means Light To Me.

Don’t leave this dooming feeling. Don’t jump. Her name means Unjump

The Darkness. Staying is a kind of writing, she said. Writing is a kind

of loving. Loving sticks a widget into the machinery of doubt.

Sticks it out. She knows what I’m afraid of. Biggest grief.

Tunnel of unforgiveness. She knows stay and say are two siblings

walking home in the rain. And I do wonder how to love without

dissolving, how to stay without unloving. Isaac Luria in the 16th

century argued God wrought the world because without it, God had no

expression for compassion, generosity. God might have been a giver,

but how can anyone cup a hand around another hand

            if there’s no other

yet, just infinite beforeness. Knock knock, the lemon squeezer says,

Who’s there, says infinite beforeness, It’s me,

            the stainless steel responds,

I’m God, you’re citrus, let’s start a world. Nobody’s a mother without

somebody to blame. Nobody’s born unwedged between dirt and sky.

It takes something round to wrap round something round, press down,

press hard and love comes out. THIS ISNT HOW LOVING GOES,

I’m yelling at Isaac Luria’s grave, blue as a thwack of sky on stolen

land. The thing about staying, she’s saying, is staying

            drapes itself over everything

you’re scared of. Like a blanket full of buttonholes, and stars wedged

into them. The thing about blankets is they’re less threatening

            than love.

Her care pins me to a place called Here. Her name means Generous

To Me, and Pressing Hard With Buttons. I’m trying to say Yes

            to the holes

where buttons go. Yes to the cupped hand before fruit, to the sting

of juice. I could live here between dirt and sky, grow a garden

in the storm drain. I could grow the garden here– Edenic river

of honey, milk, river of balsam, of wine. I could spread out here

and stay. Pin my fears to paper, regret and what they call

“The Great Friendship Recession.” THIS ISNT HOW

LOVING GOES! I’m yelling just before the world

begins. The world gets made each morning.

And we’ve emptied all the garden’s fields.

This poem is the winner of the 2024 Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, an award established by APR to honor the late Stanley Kunitz’s dedication to mentoring poets.