Hands filled with sand from the inside,
grating, stiff and frozen from the cold.

Wind curves,
finds a place in my abdomen
and stays for winter.

I wish I could make one phenomenal leap towards the sky,

(whistling through the ragged collage of clouds--
it's so beautiful up here sweetheart!)

and catch the breath of your balloon.

But by now it's a red penny up there,

and my superhero powers are less than super,

so we'll just sit on the park bench and I'll say this.

Dry your river eyes honey, we'll get a blue one.


And maybe some ice cream.

The feeling presses against the walls of my stomach.
Its hands are on the inside of my chest
like a gulp of something hot.
Garish distraction might chase it away,
but I nurture it like the rising yeast on the counter,
watch the bread overflow and
suffocate its container in a sticky embrace.

I want to feel the heartbeat of the dough before it dies,
I want to bury my fingers in the life of the bread.
Everything we eat is dead, no matter how alive the taste
or close to its wide-eyed birth we are,
so I want to feel the life as it grows, browns.
I want to see its descent into the inanimate,
until its carcass lies stiff on my plate,
taking moist feelings with it.

let's hang a ceramic rifle on the wall,
(blue and white, don't forget the flower designs)
next to my china plate collection.

We won't slam the door anymore
(imagine the noise as it shatters to the ground),
but at least our rabbit-killing neighbors
can know we're one of them.

You have lived too long under my bed. I said this a year ago, but you only moved to my closet,
and before that, the kitchen cupboards were heavy with your dust. I tried scraping you from the forks, but failed and ate finger food for weeks until you moved to the garden. Now I am tired of this knot in my back, and I am telling you to leave.

My child was eating dirt today—no, not you, my other child, but I thought of you. She shoved fistfuls into her mouth, gnashed it in her teeth until I saw the muddy smile ink across her face.

How can one burst of horror live on in the mundane? You’re in the paint on the walls and the clouds puffing past. I swear by the God I used to know that you are in everything, that you are everything.

I think of when dirt was shoved into my own mouth, maybe into yours too. I think of the mob
where I trampled others, and soon was trampled by those behind me.

I think of these things, but I can’t go on. I love you, but you need to leave.

I knew a boy who saw stories in the clouds.

he said,
some are painted on the domed-jar  sky
and some--like those popcorn creatures up there,
lifted themselves over the mountains and flew away.

When the paint licks down the side of the jar,
the creatures are crying, he told me,
that's when people bloom their umbrellas
and look down at the sequined ground.

But they should look up.

See on this hill, you look up and
believe that the world is round,
they would have known Columbus was right
if they only loved the clouds more.

You and me are special. We look up, he said,

and even then, when I could count my age on one hand,
I knew it was true.