easy visions of hopeful future days
boys with dark scarves and fingertips and
tongues carved like needles

unwound with blue lace
smoke like curling paper scraps

the sky is violet
yellow and gray and aching
the trees are paintbrush silhouettes

home stock draining roots
i caress your ball-bearing palms
like drawing lilies from water's edge
inside the sunbeam we cannot see

dreams of once upon a time late nights
held between bitten fingernails and chapped lips
of fourteen years old
a smoke hazy and ***** loss of consciousness

of movement
of loss