I walk down the sidewalk,
Past dull brick buildings scribbled with graffiti.
Even when we were together,
You acted like you couldn’t see me when I walked into a room,
And you didn’t take out your ear buds when I was talking to you.
I imagine a blade slicing through my neck,
Sliding cleanly through my solid, peachy skin
And then slipping through my trachea and arteries and cartilage.
I imagine this all happening very quick.
I pass by Macatelli’s and those pink tutus in the window that you made me wear for a laugh with your friends.
I went along with it just to make you smile.
I pick my way across the train tracks to get to the north side of town.
My green Nikes crunch over the cracked and gravely sidewalks.
Your mouth always folded down in a smirk whenever I read my poetry,
Saying they were all about ***
When you knew I just meant love.
I imagine the blade as it gets stopped short, caught on my spinal cord.
It carves through most of it,
Leaving my head to just kind of hang there by that one little shard of bone,
Dangling about my body like a grape on a vine.
I turn to go down Fifth Street,
Where you grabbed my *** last week and giggled as you kept walking.
I stood there frozen, terrified, as you twirled around to ******* the most poisonous kiss that ever floated through this air.
Even though we broke up months ago.
My head droops down onto my shoulder,
Unable to fully decapitate.
Through the few veins that are still attached,
The blood continues to pump.

Haven’t you done enough?
Oh, Charlotte Denver, won’t you just let me die.

Orange canoe leaves and castling roots
   and a potpourri of rocks and twigs and mosses
     hailed my pathway.
Fresh, white flowers mingled with their rusted sisters
upon the ground, like copper-splashed jasper.  
        The canoe leaves curled
as the white and rusted flowers tumbled through them
like toppled teacups and feathered, Victorian party hats.  
     Their christened sisters mirrored them among the boughs above
and talked loftily about the treetops
      as the fallen ones chattered amidst *******
      and the roots dividing the tables of their tea party—
unaware, and heedless, of how far they’d fallen.

Most mornings are spare,
Like the spaces between the branches of a spruce tree.
Most mornings are clearings in woods
And bare bark.
Most mornings sound of violins
And Torquil Campbell’s voice swooning in and out of Bach’s Suites,
Leaving you empty,
Hueing you in gray,
And sketching you, lightly, onto white notebook paper.