if a tree falls (and No One is around)

The man was white that named the tree “no one,” and so too I was named.

Every day I am sick of God. I am sick of the old God, and sick of the new ones forged every morning
on Ellen. I study the cracks in the street and the lines in my palms and pray that no one, no one at all, is
bigger than Me, nor bigger than the bustling Ant or yellow Bird, no more vast or wide than the
yawning Valley, each grain of Sand, or the Mountain no one put there— no one but the ancient dark,
the hungry black that swallows our small prayers. Once I screamed and no one heard me. I prayed and
no one did. Over and over I heard echoes in the night, voices like mine calling to no one, other No
Ones hearing nothing, wailing.

Over and over, god screams in the dark. god prays to herself and hopes anyone is listening; she forgets
her name is god. My prayer is this— I lift it to my own ears:

one day the dawn will burst that we do not beg Someone to hear us, and it will be that morning I paint
my name in blood and sap on the throat of the God before me: “No One,” the young and spiteful god
of Peace, god of Dirt, god of Silence, prince of Weeds, Steward and Lamb of the unknowable
root-tongues twisting in rapture under the mud of the forest— I will testify to Us that when the tree
fell, the woods heard, and when the man comes again to call me by that name— “no one”— the forest
will devour him and whisper,

“No One fell in the woods,
No One heard it,

No One made a sound.”

praise to the dandelion

i too am a low thing, refusing.
i too am a gentle summer light waking
in the season of disbelief. Gentle to my brothers
who spring up in my place once they are without me;
my place is everywhere we seek.
i, too, am a note in a chorus of rage
reflecting the sun; we want nothing but
our own selves. i am
the living grace of bodies who find each other,
despite. How many are our names.

Rosie is a theater-maker & producer, poet, actor, event curator and native Detroiter. Their professional debut as a playwright and director, the audience-involved game-theater piece Letters in the Dirt, put them on No Proscenium’s 2018 list of 25 Immersive Companies & Creators to Watch in New York, nominated for three awards by the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation. Their poetry has been featured in a number of local, national, and international publications, including Wasafiri Magazine and Rabbit Catastrophe Press (finalist, 2017 Real Good Poem Award). Now back in Detroit, they are a Winter 2020 poetry fellow of Room Project Detroit.