I.
Lain down, unconcealed
toward the window
shoulder to hip -- a shadowy cursive
perhaps penumbra

II.
Seated, face in utter profile
standing, sorting laundry
washing dishes, guarding
the radiator

III.
Hair eschewed in
conjugated waters
double-exposed
roots and
foliage -- wisps
of sugarland
in subtext
their dark net
cast over a pearly bright sea
discovery left
to the imagination

delphinium migrant blue,
and into night
we follow,
toward the residue
of morning,
where there's no time
limit to grief.

you wake with
electric intervals,
something's wrong
with yesterday,
in your head are
galaxies like grains of salt,
and they fill up the sky.

these red metallic balloons,
that come to you
when you are ripped open,
whether it’s by pain
and heartache
or you’re falling in love,
these you can’t close
yourself off to.

but what you actually want
is to bypass them,
and try to reach that
dawn serenade,
which is floating
above them,
as if golden electric ribbons
which don’t
demand repayment.

scavenger bride,
she counted periods
before the children came along,
but never suspected
eyes like bottles
beginning to blue,
a tangle of scars
hermetically sealed,
the new order of
a broken romance,
dead love cassettes
in the glove compartment,

her cold and empty
constellations,
like cold breath
passing through a beam of sunlight,
grid of points, pendulums,
the ratio of freckles to stars,
no subtle countenance,
martinis and bikinis,
soft ******* and ice cream,
slight, elusive things, on a beach
with no more meaning,

the repeating pattern of
her mistakes and reliefs,
a preservation of decay,
sustained by the tiny
human fault line
in that oneiric hinterland,
between dreaming and waking,

she draws around the noise
and the clearings,
she creates within that sightline
the way her sadness can feel
comfortable,
an extension of loss that turns
her ruins into a home.

Take me back to a time
when a vow
was the color of
everyone's tomorrow

Take me back to a place
where a promise
never led to
man's great sorrow

Where the breeze
would linger in the grass

No one ever questioning
how long it would last