Pitch

I’m a tarpit into which every moment falls—
sunlight raking across bricks and into broken
windows of a warehouse along the Hudson;
that bramble thorn piercing the cupid’s bow
of my lip, kissing me bloody when I was seven;
the gauze of my great-grandmother’s cotton
dress as I tried to dodge her bristly kisses. (All
week, all I hadn’t known I’d remembered has
bubbled up like methane through bitumen.)
I’m an asphalt seep, a dark iridescence where
an infinite number of memories have massed
and caught fire, thin flames licking my skin.