The year I broke every window.
The year I stole every library book.
The year I lived below the El,
always the hum, running through and by,
of people who desired to be arrived.
I couldn’t see them but knew wanting.
The year I didn’t sleep.
None of this tells how on the tri-corner of 23rd,
Broadway, and Fifth I called into the gusts,
My fault, my fault.
None of this says sorrow. And means it.
You need the certainty of story, of pattern:
boy meets girl, boy leaves girl, boy regrets.
Trains run through me, and I am not a train.
Air touches my skin, and I am not sky.
I don’t need to believe each time I curse
God, or sleep with a stranger,
or refuse decision,
the spaces in my body widen, are deep like a well,
bone dry, and halfway to China.
I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done it all.
Redemption, take my name.
Ask me inside. Let me enter.
A house inside a house.
A prayer inside a prayer.

Joshua Rivkin is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, where he now teaches in the continuing studies program. This poem first appeared in Boston College’s inaugural issue of Post Road magazine (see story here). Tikkun is a Hebrew word for “repair.”