I dreamt that wax
sqeezed out from my ears
like toothpaste.
Dripped onto my feet
casting a mold.
Statuing my legs.
Zipping up my hips.
I dreamt my throat
was a metal pipe
running dry.
Vibrating echoes
cut short and
replaced with a dusty ellipsis.

Passively shrinking
inside a shell
that I'll never be
strong enough to crack.

How did this happen?
How did the thing we're made of
become the thing to **** us?

You broke your little girl.

You dropped her head
in a boiling ***
and the pressure
broke her skull.

Fished her out
and set her
in the sun to
dry and dry and dry.

Your neglectful hands
left her there to turn
the color of things
trapped between train tracks.

And now she exists.
You can hear her
but you don’t understand
what she’s screaming.

It wasn’t my intention
to collect your love
and place it on a shelf.

The dust makes you sneeze,
and I’m sorry, I’ve just
been busy.

It takes a lot
for me to climb my step stool
to break up

the cobwebs that
have settled on you
and Paul and Chris and Jake.

Moths float out from behind
an opened, warped door.
I push my face into your clothes,
hung heavy like pearls
in an antique shop.
Stale and familiar,
the scent follows me
like a lost little bee.
It buzzes even after I leave.

Hopscotch down the hallway
to find dead crickets
in the bathtub.
Scuffed wallpaper camouflages
a cobweb. Metallic vines
curve around bursts of petals.
I’m certain you chose this pattern,
but I don't know.

Memories are few.
I fill in the holes with honey
and arrowheads.
Indian feathers and
an old brooch.
Piles of pie.
Did you love to bake pie?

Games of bridge
on that old, scratched table top
with a musty deck of Bicycle cards.
Each deck a photo album
of your face.

Your raisined face.
I remember holding it in my hands.
“This aint a walk for old womans.”
And out the door I go.
Empty handed and independent.

Wind bends a weak branch.
Fresh leaves sing in harmony.
A lizard of the same color
slowly stretches his way from leaf to spine.
He stops to investigate a string
of silk from a spider's web
and I wonder how that tastes.
Lit up like a jack-o-lantern,
his glowing body
reveals organs and vessels
much like my own.
He makes his 30 foot ascent
above hot cement
just to sunbathe on a leaf.
What a life that is.

You don't want to fall into a hole,
not with me anyways.
Too tight. Dark.

Fear not.
Our pieces don't fit in
any hole I know.

You'll fall in a hole
one day - your version of one -
because you really love her.

Holes aren't so bad.
Seeds fall into holes
and then flowers bloom.

Sun-bleached and fluttering,
a butterfly weaves around us.
“I wonder who that is?”
The sun bursts from Grandmother’s face.

By summer she had passed.
Everything was yellow, golden,
like pages from old hymnals.
Hazy sunlight passes through stained glass
and lands there on her face.
“Why are you crying? She’s right here.”

Cross-legged in the shade
of a spiraling cypress tree,
I say hello again.
Sunbeams pierce through
leaves and reflect off her
iridescent wings
and I know she’s at peace here in my palm.

The brevity of a butterfly.
The perfect vessel
for a wandering spirit.