all the girls standing in the line for the bathroom

          after N.E.R.D.’s “Everyone Nose”

all the wholesome messages written on the stall walls:
you are valid, you deserve to take up space.
all the toasts so eager we spill the brown liquid
on our nice shirts. all the alcohol
we decided not to drink. all the present
fathers, hand-painting benches on porches.
all the parents out on picnics, fingertips wet
on plastic champagne flutes. all the ants
too busy in their tunnels to notice anything
but their bustling siblings. all the basketball
games played in the driveway with the rim
nailed to the garage. all the men nailed to the club
wall scouting, replace them with men
there with friends, bothering no one. all the girls
safe. all the boys accountable. all the bathrooms
with working sinks, our small efforts
to keep clean, to prepare to return
to the world when we’re done in these small rooms.
all the lights. all the murals ornamenting the un-gardened
district with flowers. all the bees zipping
to the melted juice of snow cones
next to garbage cans and not into black children’s hair.
all the roly-polies in the crevice under
the garage door stirring with the light
as the door lifts. it took me too long to learn
not to touch them. to let them be. turns out
the rolling into a ball, the thing we know them for
is a response to fear. to threat. all the fathers
teaching their sons what to do with their hands,
which is to say what not to do
with them. all the hands in pockets, or popping
pimples in the mirror, or posing
for silly selfies, or planting new trees: letting them
grow at their own pace and build
their fresh buds, their un-interrupted roots.