Should wedding bells chime in a dream you have, I pray the man,   miming affection     near the altar is not me. I am ragamuffin; a butcher with no cleaver     in his shadow,
instead a bouquet: Clenched in my silhouetted hand flowers turn into torch. I burn     as a filament in a bulb half-expired. I have smoked through my pocket money    in order
to scatter cremated angels from my throat.    I am cloaked by anguish      my grief    poorly sheathed   a tattered nerve. I have only learned        how to praise darkness.

Light is painful as it shimmers against frost: grass gleams in steady growth    discolored
scars healing. Here I am letting out a blood-letter addressed to you, wondering    if I send   a snip     of my own vein will it remind you how     one missing piece    from a whole            can forfeit the future. All any future is:      a motion into the next moment,  its pending indecision none can envision.      We can’t help but revise malleable pasts. Memories flux     rippling water and enough light changes it’s refraction with each new  ripple.        I cannot be a lover if love is not static    humming at least from its hymnal.  

I   write this letter in calligraphy mourning,    like most poets do – rending heart  rendering  this broken universe – with bone and feathered quill. This feather is from my wing, the pair fallible love clipped         the first chance you took to kiss my darkness.

I’m charting learning a path to winter in an opposite sky:
one only I can fly.