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I watched Dad lift
the stunted tree from a highway table,
ceramic *** hot as a skillet in his palms.
Its roots pressed tight
against their shallow prison,
a life made small,
taught to accept it.

He drove through the Mojave
with the bonsai on his lap,
branches trembling
as if already afraid of him.
I whispered secrets to its needles,
pressed my lips to its tiny crown
the way you kiss a sleeping baby.

In the cabin,
rain thickened the air with cedar and promise.
I circled stones around the tree
like friends around a birthday cake
and waited for it to laugh.

When its *** shattered,
he said nothing.
I held its dangling roots in my hands,
mud soaking through my shoes,
syrup cracking on my cheeks.

We buried him-
a little boy, I said,
at the lake’s edge
beside his mother
whose twisted trunk leaned toward water.
Dad said magic would save him,
hoodoo magic,
forest magic,
the kind that never answers back.

On the drive home
I counted hoodoos in silence
and watched the empty bucket
roll on the back seat
like a heart without a cage.
I found a staircase carved into thunder
Each step a tooth pulled from sleeping beasts
The air tasted of copper
And half-remembered hymns
I climbed until my name fell off my shoulders
And rolled back into the darkness like a coin
Mirrors waited
Cracked and sighing with old weather
And when I reached for one
It bit my hand
A lantern swung from the jawbone of a tree
Older than remorse
Moths gathered like ash in my mouth
And taught me to speak
In vanished dialects
Even the silence had a pulse
I tried to pray once
But the sky folded its arms
Every word transformed into wolves
Who wouldn't approach me
The horizon was a wound stitched with lightning
Far below
Cities slept in the stomachs of drowned bells
Their windows flickering with dreams left unclaimed
I wanted to wake them
But my hands resembled rivers
And everything I touched forgot its shape
By dawn
I had grown antlers made of frost
And a mouth full of rain
The staircase ended in nothing
Except the sound of wings
Turning to glass
A climb that strips you bare, becoming something else
Is the only way down
-Sorelle
There is a name
for the man with a hundred hands
who lies under your bed,
fifty mucked-up faces
for fifty bad-luck places
where your loved ones end up dead.

Rumpelstiltskin will not do.
Call him Briareos the Hecatoncheir
when his bone-breaking arms
reach up for you.

Call him Gyges, the fox,
sliding through your traps and lures;
Torquemada
when the dark door locks;
Haman, whispering to the jury;
Pharaoh, smiling in the hall;
******-
when the gas begins to fall.

You think you know him.
Do you?
Name him.
Or he will name your fate,
and you’ll hear it spoken
when the floor gives way.
Sixteen,
skin baked with brine and chlorine,
Top 40 hissing in my Walkman.

The girl found me first,
barefoot on the sandy trail,
tears spilling, pointing back to the sea.
A jellyfish sting, she couldn’t say it,
just clung to my leg like kelp.

Her mother rose from the dunes,
black bikini, tan lines,
two beach bags gnawing her wrists.
coconut oil, salt, chipped Jackie O shades.
She sighed, called the girl dramatic,
drifted home on scraping sandals.

Their world leaked into ours,
adjacent green bungalow
with fronds rattling like bones,
oranges sagging into white fuzz,
ATV ruts torn through the yard.
Rob polishing his Camaro,
coughing through pollen and Skoal,
swearing he saw a gator the size of a boat
slide into the canal at dusk.

She’d wander up, black bikini,
thighs shining,
shadow falling across my pool chair.
“Hey, you see my kid?”
she’d ask, leaning close,
the scent of Coppertone and Marlboro Gold
fogging my thoughts.

I’d shift polite, church-boy manners,
“No, ma’am,”
She’d smile
at the clumsy hormones
rising off me like steam.

Nights were bonfires,
oranges softening to flies,
Rob coughing in his driveway
while the pool light hummed and flickered.
Her shadow swam on the walls,
slick as the gator sliding into dusk.
Unravel me
Loosen up the bow, feel the needle pull
Out words I never did mean
Well, you know me

After the bliss, a liar
Gets tired of this
It feels like the truth’s a fire
They play with for kicks
I burn my one effulgent hour
at a driveway banquet of unwanted goods,
listening to a woman in a Sag Harbor T-shirt
tell me her son’s wife hates her,
she never sees the grandkids,
and she’s moving to Costa Rica
because the dollar goes farther
and no one visits anyway.

Through my sunglass scrim
I watch komorebi flicker
across the varicose veins
of her blue-white calves
and wonder why I even stopped,
why I ask the price of a microwave
I don’t want.

Twenty, she says,
brand new, never used.
I hand her two crumpled dollars
for a box of yellowed greeting cards
with kittens and roses
and tell her my real name.

All the while
I feel the light through leaves,
the ache to bite your buttermilk neck,
to nip the chantarelles of your earlobes,
while the shadow falls,
reminding me I’d better love
whatever I am doing -
because it may be the last thing I ever do.
The oracles don't whisper to the living
They chant in vapour
In marrow
In echoes only heard when the self has softened
You must forget your shape
To bear their song
And become smoke to listen
I walked barefoot on salted glass
Between two moons, arguing softly
A crow watched me with seven eyes
And every blink re-wrote my spine
I asked for peace
It offered vision
I asked for answers
It offered mirrors too honest to survive
The oracles don't whisper to the living
They speak in rust
In moth wings
In teeth lost to grief
Their tongues run rivers underground
And you will drown before you understand
I saw a god blink once
And galaxies collapsed inward
Distracted, not cruel
The veil is not a curtain
But a membrane of remembering
I pressed my face through it
And came back less human
More true
The oracles wove their riddles
In the seams of my ribs
Now I hum when it rains
And dream in reverse
The oracles don't whisper to the living
They wait
And when your voice becomes dust
They will answer in wind and meaning
Not words or mercy
If you hear them
You are no longer asking
You are becoming what you once feared to know
When silence teaches you more than mercy ever could
-Sorelle
I keep the flood in a teaspoon
Stir slow
Don’t spill
My throat learned how to
Knot itself into napkins
Folded
Unused
Beautiful
You blinked and the room dimmed
Just enough for me to
Pack the sun away
I speak in mist
Maybe
Never rain
Your name still fits
But only on the inside of my wrist
Where nobody looks
I walk lighter now
No grace
Just
Less of me left to carry
If I’m quiet enough you might
Stay
So I practice being nothing
Loudly
Sometimes survival is silence wrapped in silk
-Sorelle
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