Cargo Weight

The form asks for a street name

and I have to leave the box empty.

I don't know the name of the dirt

that held up my mother's first house.

I have this knife instead.

Grandfather kept it in a wooden crate

across an ocean that didn't want him.

It is blunt and heavy in the palm.

The steel has a permanent curve

from decades of grinding against stone,

a slow erosion of the blade's edge

to keep the center sharp for the meat.

We carry the tools because we lost the map.

We sharpen the metal until it’s thin

and hope it’s enough to cut a new path

through the paperwork of a different city.