In fairness, the end could not have been easier.
A stillborn breath gutted out,
old lump of a deathly echo.
I am entombed here,
on this island fortified with a thousand winters.
Effortless to migrate and molt.
To voyage out alone and build hateful nest
of iron-ice and blackened blood-frost.
Easy to tie the corded wastrels
into empty fire pits and dream there,
like the corpses of gods
left scattered on the roadside.
Such cavities do not touch me,
nor do I haze about with vagaries concerning such things.

It’s your scars that cut into me now,
and my last prayer hangs about you
like a shroud of fog.
Let all else wheel by,
but you stay.
You stay,
and close those galaxy-eyes against me.
What blood is left in me
runs for you, my love,
and when all else is chalk-ice and tempest winds,
still my skin impersonates me.
Still you run through my memory cave
in the shape of an ox,
dressed in charcoal.
How I hate this charade.

What is easy about it?
Even the name of the smallest grain of sand
is a story too long to tell,
too long to remember.
Each end of it fades out and goes on,
maybe looping itself
and holding out in defiance
of the unidirectional flow of time.
I will go backwards next time and get simpler,
sloughing off forgotten icebergs
like burrs caught in my feathers.
Like a salmon returning to spawn,
growing young and warm again,
uncorrupted.
And one day,
sweetly anonymous in your eyes:
unknown, unnamed, and free.

Bells chime.
The world is a pale imposter of itself,
gray in the moonlight,
but not indifferent.
Coy perhaps, complicit.
In league with me, perhaps.

The paper birch trees shuffle aside,
in line like ghostly sentinels,
and the briars curl back in black swarthy masses
to clear a path,
mumbling a song in their old forgotten language,
each leaning toward me, toward my house,
pointing the way.
A faint glimmer, light ahead,
yes, the warm glow of firelight
beneath the moss and stone of the highland hills.

Distant laughter, the *****! of glasses and
bell chimes.
The susurrations of the nighttime grasses
whisper in time with the tunes of my fiddlers;
they know the songs of my blood, my bones.

Come to my house in the hills – yes, you must come!
We will dance as the swallows do,
as the daisies do when the winds blow,
and watch the walls and faces
blur into one another as we spin round and round,
swapping faces, swapping bodies.
The other guests wear garments of wanderlust and daring,
and their dance is one of flame and dust.

Come!
Dance within my house,
between walls of polished ivory
and a ceiling studded with pearls and diamonds
and the teeth of extinct animals.

Come!
We are free here:
free to forget,
free to deny.
Free, at last, to revel in the revelry
and be as unwise as it pleases us to be.
Here is a place where wisdom
is useless and none
will accuse you of sensible conduct.

And after,
when the sunlight tosses me back into the ocean
and hauls you out
dream of me.

Sandbox constructs, talk to me.
Play to me.
Dancing straw, pull on the wind,
give color and shape, give name.
I will be straw too one time, then many times,
and will dance with the straw in the wind.
These are joyful times, all alone, no interference. No you.

Mouse you sneaks in the sandbox,
chews on my straw and nests in my sand.
In possession of some key.

(I want to ask about the key, but I can’t.
I am supposed to be made of straw.)

Perturbed, I chase you out.
My world of sand and straw is too fragile for your beating heart.
It will fall apart, will be rubbed raw and threadbare.
But you sneak in again,
and look at me as if I am not straw,
and the ground as if it is not sand
but solid earth, rich and full.

Clearing the board I start over.
Drive you out
and begin to map out the pattern of this cloth.
Time begins to unspool, following its slow track.
Joyful in this beginning, this gradual awakening.
Patience.
Humility.

I never know when (or if) you’re going to appear.
So often the game plays out without a hitch,
or you appear so late that it makes no difference.
But I hear your heartbeat now: the rapid thudding,
and know you are here.
A mouse nuzzling through the straw,
invading the gentle morning of this world
when all may be ruined, all may be averted.

Bold, undisguised you,
and I, perfect shaft of damp straw;
it does not fool you.
Discovered at the worst moment,
tender and caught.
You, unruffled by the wind, realizing the position you’re in.
Realizing the position I’m in:
holding all the keys but unprepared to use them.

You have your own plans and ideas.
You dance around me,
playing provocateur, trying to make me
show my hand, my key.
I pretend I don’t know what you’re up to.
I hope you lose interest and give up.
Hope a chance wind sweeps you up,
like a great swell from the sea,
and I never see you again.
Hope you suddenly doubt yourself, blinking,
finally convinced by my damp posing,
my mute bafflement and loyalty to the wind
and wonder, isn’t this straw?

Dare I play your game?
Dare I nod to your tune?

I use one of my keys.
Walk through a door that shouldn’t open,
you at my heels, all eager to see backstage,
to see the actor who plays me.

You already know what you have known since you saw my face.
The same face you have seen dancing in and out
of pale replicas of borrowed worlds.

And finally I let you hear from my lips
what you have suspected the whole time.
That I am not the straw or the sand or even the wind.
That I know you aren’t either.
That I know that you know.
That yes, it was a character and it was a role.
That it was a game I play, usually alone.

“It was just for light fun and idle amusement,” I say.
“Nothing was at stake.
So why the sabotage?”

Then, in spite of our twin hearts,
I see how different you are from me.
What calms me enrages you.
What worries me soothes you.
What I call “light fun and idle amusement”
you call “life and death.”
“Everything was at stake,” you say.
You say, “this world is full, full to the brim. People just like you.”

Fool.
Don’t you realize where you are?
Look around, it is a world of sand and straw
blowing in the wind.

We are ghosts that cast shadows
flying through your thoughts like birds:
one minute there, the next gone.
We are the birds, the absent,
and it is bad luck to mention us.
We may take wing, stop lingering and leave,
may not return, may fade away
like fog under the burning sun.

But fly to us, come to us and you will see,
we are humans with body and voice,
with eyes that see and hearts that yearn.
We shed our feathers and weave stories with them,
give them away
give them all away.
You too will know what it is to fly.

But tiredly you flag,
the wind sags beneath your wings.
You drop to the earth,
feathers falling all around you,
and we become the birds once again
fading into the morning mist
that hovers on the horizon.

Vital parts, missing.
This has to mean something.
Held together by a face,
saving face, but still coughing.
“How bad is it?” A head, shaking,
nothing we can do.
I suppose this is what you wanted.
Right?

White teeth flecked red, peppermint breath.
Slow down.
Slow down that heartbeat.
Why you?
Why does it have to be you?
Bet you’re loving this.
The sky, slashes of sunlight over the hills, shades of blue and green.
It has to mean something.

Just listen. If this is the end...
Fear messages, helplessly echoing words
that have always been said by the dying.
Eyes that suddenly reveal the mortal behind them.
And promises
from the one who, shocked, finds an unexpected answer,
both kind and true, ready at the lips.
I never doubted your courage.
Pink spittle, the derisive reply.
Familiar tone, familiar grounds.

Go away. Go.
The dark, the dulling.
Night draws itself upon us both,
the cold, the quiet.
The steady vigil of the stars,
the baring of the grim moon
and the endless darkness in between —
it has to mean something!

Oh look, here’s another artist.
Nostalgic since birth and obsessed with their own mortality,
counting what is worth noticing before we are all exiled, cut
off from our own bodies.
Yes, we all know what’s coming, sh.
It’s all been heard before, all been seen.
So don’t raise your voice with worn out warnings,
dry as wind whispering through desert caves,
you are echoing the trumpets
that have sounded since the beginning of time.

Now here comes a lover coated in gleaming delusion,
confident in the supreme uniqueness of her experience,
asserting that no,
you cannot possibly know what it is like.
This is different.
        And when it falls apart, the uproar!
        The injustice of it! The tragedy!
        and the loneliness,
        as if no one else had ever felt rejection,
        as if no one else had ever discovered
        that love is painful and reductive.
        Disillusioned and duped she wonders why
        there were no warnings. Imagine!
        Living in this world and not hearing warnings,
        or hearing them and having the arrogance to say no,
        it does not apply to me,
        you cannot possibly know.

And now the green poet floats by,
driven on by spring breezes and the color of wildflowers.
Wide-eyed but never quite struck dumb,
he gawks and wonders and wishes,
plucking detail from gulls’ wings and leaves’ veins,
gamely trying to translate and bankrupting the dictionary every time,
saying “this is beautiful” over and over,
not unlike a tourist.
And like a tourist disappearing
before he sees the bleak and desperate side,
the side that rears it’s head with hungry eyes
and regards you as a stranger.

But still, to create something that absorbs all that people say about it.
To become something like that, finally.
Maybe … it is still worth something?

But no,
time to time, there has been time. Time
for the sun to rise and set,
and for the stars to be born and then burn out. Time
to hear the rise and fall of a thousand stories,
and a thousand more. Time
to be filled with curiosity and questions. Time
to stop asking questions. Time
to see the same patterns again and again. Time
for new patterns, but with the same trite components. Time
to say all that is worth saying, and more.
Much more.
The same voices, the same faces,
the same conversations, again.
The contrast getting grayer, going soft.
And once again all these young people
using their superlatives, investing everything right away,
saying “this is important.”
Children who believe the best and worst things
that have ever happened
are happening now.

Is it problematic to say I find my own heartbeat cliché?
Even the rise and fall of my chest as I breathe
exasperates me. It’s been done before,
it’s all been done before.
This is why I will never point at anything and say
“this is something.”
Nor will I say who I am or who you are.
I leave you to your own ugly assumptions.

Locked out of my own mind: let me back in!
The keys crack
        off, break and jangle,
        flat palm against a door: let me back in.
        Checking all the doors, solid.
And wait, is there noise coming from inside?
Glass shattering? Wood splintering?
Mystery cracks and creaks, not giving a hint:
what is wrong!? Is everything okay?
        Let me back in!
Checking the windows, do they slide? Are they unlatched?
No. Something is not right ...but what could it be?
Both palms on the glass,
eyelashes against the glass: curtains
made of smoke. Heat. Smack with both hands,
punch. Pick up a rock and throw it:
it’s only glass. It will break
and I will get back in,
will see what is wrong and how to make it better.
Beat out the flames and put everything back in order,
back in place. Then all will be peaceful
and I will relax with relief back into myself, all back to normal
except for one shattered window.

Hesitate, rock in hand to wonder:
is it worth it?
All the sounds have gone quiet:
maybe it is over, maybe
nothing is wrong. Maybe
I’m about to break a window for no reason,
        cause a ruckus for no reason,
        throw a fit, make a scene, get up in arms,
                                                                ­               for no reason.
And maybe it’s better not to know,
to wait outside until it passes,
                  whatever “it” is.
Just hold still and wait, like an animal caught out in the open,
bracing against foul weather. Commit to it:
living separately for a little while.
Think only of the next second
and how to get there.
Grow a second skin, maybe.
Watch the plants, watch
as the moss unfurls
like someone shaking out a blanket,
the trees thicken.

Again, the sounds,
        the signs that all is not well.
Someone is locked in there,
someone unable or unwilling to communicate with the outside.
A crack, something shifting.
Thoughts and memories realigning,
resorting to sorting through disorganized databases,
disbanding old patterns and expectations.
Inscrutable.
My mind still locked,
I have to guess what I am thinking.
                           what I am feeling.
                           what I am missing.
Peer through the windows for a glimpse.
Ask again, what is wrong?
without receiving an answer.
Just smoke leaking through the keyhole.
Falling asleep on the doorstep in spite of the wind and noise.

And when finally the storm is over.
A creak.
A door, open.

In blurry confusion voices pierce through, saying
“What do you want?” and “what do you want?”
Blundering, I can’t find my way out of the crossroads quickly enough.
First to know where I am, to know whether I am buying or selling,
threatening or begging. To haul myself off a flashing screen
or a stranger’s dreadlocks as a thousand lines intersect
and cross, stripes on top of stripes as the smells
of sewage and street food intermingle,
and the resulting discordant din.

Then to recognize myself amidst the crowd long enough to ask
what do you want? What do
I want? And when I answer,
do I hear my own voice coming as though from a distant well?
As one note in the hubbub and burble of the human sea?
And do I skim my words like **** from a pond’s surface?

I have not closed my eyes but I have stopped looking through them.
Randomly thawing long enough to realize where I am:
somewhere suffocating, somewhere that closes around the throat
like sea foam: soft, but endless. Scattering
my eyes across all the eyes that bob up and down,
passing and crossing like ships in the dark.
So numb I did not even notice I was drowning.

In the lull, rising to consciousness, breaching the surface
as though for a breath of air. Reconnecting with
and remembering which person I currently am,
and what this person wants: just to be free.
To shake off whatever numbness blended my voice
with the music and chatter and discord of this place
and blurred my face, making me an anonymous limb
attached to a much larger body.
Only now realizing the irony of that condition.

Faintly, faintly, I’m beginning to hear you.
“Teacher” is what I call you, and what you are to me.
“Teach me.” No matter where I may be
my identity will apparently always be
“The Student” and I, like an actor given a role,
play it.

Quietly, a pair of eyes gaze sponge-like
at your catalogue of lessons,
trying to erase the body —
— which is too loud, too needy,
too everything —
and try not to let you be drowned out
by my dreams, my ideas, my expectations.
What are you saying now?

Something about… my own powerlessness?
Not the throngs of swans and the songs of the dawn?
Instead, prolonged wrongs and the dawning sense
that I don’t belong here?

No! No, that can’t be the lesson.
I am too natural, too sky-edged.
I’m too much the daughter of moss,
too akin to the hanging lichen that drapes ghost-like off the trees
and too free, heart up against the sea.
In short, too me.

But this means nothing to you.
I have to go quiet again, stop filling in the blanks
with words and more words. Recalling my role,
I listen for a lesson.

(And this is the first lesson I learn:
“Be Quiet And Listen”)

Fingers laced together, I am a basket.
Take parts to build a heart: you will need
wild things, beautiful things.

Mostly you will need
things that no one asked for,
that no one expected.
Things that have no reason to exist,
but do.

Netted spiderwebs and nettle fistfulls.
Fish scales and cotton cattails.
Dragonflies skimming across the water in the early morning
and fireflies imitating stars in the somber dusk.
The eddies behind rocks that jut brashly from the river
and the ribbons woven wreath-like through wrens’ nests.

Hauled up by handles, dump everything somewhere
you wouldn’t mind living.
Apply heat, settle in somewhere
you wouldn’t mind leaving.
Let sit two to twenty four hours, stirring occasionally.

Listen:
rhythm
one-two
one-two
it lives.

Don’t look at me through eyes
like the fog that clothes the valley
on an early morning in spring
       and say that you are not free.

Willful and wild, you are the wind.
You could spring upwards as though on wings,
singing and dancing,
       entrancingly lively as you slide over the lilac.

Don’t tell me you feel trapped,
that you’ve shorn off your wings
and built a bunker, brick by brick,
       where the wind no longer touches.

“You are free” I tell you.
How can I show you what I know:
that you were meant to fly?
       Carefree and breezily as the clouds in the sky?

But when I say “go! fly away!”
You dejectedly stand,
and when I say “you are free”
       you just don’t understand.

Lying flat in a river bed and covered in sheets of water:
this is where you will live.
Pure, ice-cold springwater flows
around and through, picking clean our bones like a vulture,
taking out the filth that collects like soot in chimneys.

From here only two roads:
To let go or hold on.
The instinct is to deny! hold tight, forever and ever, keep safe,
but you are here to learn the river’s lesson, to follow the flow, to be
carried away and let go.
Die happily, knowing.

Spread like sand
across the hills and gullies
peacefully dispersing
along centuries to form and reform,
learning that there are no endings.
And to know by cycles,
building familiarity, some core knowledge
which undoes the instinct that says “hold on”
and “not yet”
and “fight.”

Instead, become waterlogged.
Give up your boundaries.
This is the only way.

My eyes, python-like, swallow the sky,
greedy for the wrongs in me to go right
at the sight of your gleeful greenery
spilling over creek beds and hills.
The wind, combing out my worries,
blowing away the blockage built
by the fumes and filth collected in city gutters.
I want to be
let wild, made free.
But one wrong turn in your winding maze and I am gone,
a place like this will chew you up and spit you out.
You should leave, something tells me.
No one ever leaves fully intact,
the longer you stay, the more you will fall apart.
“On the contrary” I scoff.
“I am becoming more myself, not less.”
But this is what everyone says
just before they leap in joyful pursuit
to tumble headlong down hidden gullies.
But I am more careful, I assure myself.
I hunt the way crocodiles do,
watching patterns with keen intention,
offering my hands and eyes.
But what should I do if, when the time comes,
You resist?
Disregard me, like an unworthy suitor?
And what if that is what I am?
I see, I take note of
the way the wind blows and the shadows fall,
the way the trees twist clockwise
or counter-clockwise.
The way animals flee when I approach and
the way they keep perfectly still
hoping they are invisible.
And there are times when I see all this, and more.
Like heat distortions above a fire,
something peripheral or liminal,
almost outside the spectrum of what can be perceived
or communicated or defined.
All these trails, the ones seen and unseen
and the ones somewhat seen
lead me to a terrible suspicion:
that the likes of me lacks to tools
to understand the likes of you.
that in harmony with one another
we would both cease to be what we are.
that you will never regard me with love and worse—
you will never regard me at all.
Then I, in frustration, stop going with you.
Start to go against you.
And keep going, finally on my own.
Still myself, but less.