One Allotment

How will I know which one to call mine?
I could wait until my veins branch to the surface 
when I stay out alone in the sunlight. 
I could hide in the stairwell while the sky’s hot breath 
gleams white-yellow against the curtain wall glass 
and the wind in my organs pushes me toward the future.
How to keep inventory of that. 
How to knit together the worst of what’s coming 
like sweater-hole moths. 
Management thinks I’m not as worried 
since I haven’t been hoarding these last centuries. 
Like Sacagawea, I want a coin, another millennium. 
She never asked to turn into money 
but it was all they had. 
In grade school I kept change in a jar the shape of her head,
slotted into the gloss of her wooden hair. 
I would count acorns and a quarter for each state.
I would sit on top of the goalpost and imagine the flood 
clear as summer, polyurethane above a wet secret, 
and I would hold my breath to go inside. 
In those days children loved the future, 
every chrome-blasted corner of it, 
and I could be alone. 
Now I would like to try loneliness again 
if there is room for me on earth, 
if I may find my own crumbling corner 
of precious level ground.