I was sitting next to you on a ledge
overlooking the Hudson River
and the orange sun seemed to stare at us
as it fell, like it knew something
sad and terrible was about to happen
maybe a joke was being played on us

in the back of a dimly-lit Japanese restaurant
we cowered behind white makeshift walls
and sipped crystal blue sake, and you whispered something
and I smelled you and the smell was strong
like crushed feathers
and dead roses
such a lovely fragrance
and my heart swelled in its wake

and then a snapshot
and a white fist
and a heaviness
and a fleeting thought I’m too ashamed to disclose
and soon, you
were in between me
and your rough voice was crying
it was crying dangerous things
and then I watched you
drive your hands through worn walls

and now you are cracking
and I am weeping and I am running
through beams of lights and buzzing highways
and I am watching your hulking form disappear behind
a metal barrier, and my eyes roll back
to the orange sun that stared at us
as it swept beneath the same river
you are about to plunge in

Dear Prodigy,
I confess my eyes take photographs
(of parking lots or jeans with **** stains on knees
and my face caked in dirt) and
I never wanted your face to ****** the earth brown.
I never wanted Cracked Bone against Rough Stone.
I even star-dusted my eyes for you.

Dear Prodigy,
I’m sorry I talked to the boy with
black eyeliner for fifteen minutes while you were
on the train to nowhere. Our eyes were bleeding
out of our ears and we couldn’t stop wanting to
understand everything.
There was blood in our head and our hands
blood in your eyes
vapor in our lungs
and the transparent sun was making
my arms fragile and boneless.
I’ll never forget falling asleep clad in ripped black stockings
on your unmade bed.
Do you remember when we tried to swallow everything?

Dear Prodigy,
I dreamt last night that the whites of your eyes had been
dulled by the Indefatigable Reality of Time.
I confess my eyes take photographs
(of floating bodies and tight crisp jeans and my face caked in makeup).
I confess that my eyelids cracked open to receive light.
I kissed you but barely felt it
and there was scattered glass at our feet. The gleaming shards soaked up the silence.
My heart was sold.
I even star-dusted my eyes for you.

I know we haven’t talked in a while. Not since
I recognized the decisive crack of your voice
like a crinkling plastic gum wrapper
and I let the phone fall. That was
five years ago and I don’t know where you are now.
But I’m writing this
because I can’t stop writing
about you and your shapes and your smells and you
and white powder and you and religion
and religious books neatly stacked and you and every piece of you
and a rickety black tram bursting forth in the darkness and you
and pockets of light that sometimes shine through in cocoons or at elegant dinners
and you and aftershave and blood and muddy river water and you
and flowers in porcelain vases and couches encased in plastic and you
and I am endlessly backtracking to silent violations
and black midnights riddled with hunger and confusion and
I don’t know maybe some other time
and it’s like our hands and wrists are bound together as though bandaged
and the whites of my eyes are permanently reddened by an
invisible fire’s breath
or the glow of your face
and even now everything won’t stop shaking
and I just stare
at my hands
and tiles
and patterns in carpets
and I keep staring and staring forever
only at things that won’t move away from me
like inanimate objects but
I’ll leave you here
with a letter I’ll never mail
because I’m no longer the quivering little girl
beneath you
and I’ll get ****** up again and think
this is freedom, isn’t it?
churning sweetness and liberality into my
empty stomach?
but then why does my mouth still
taste like metal?

in a picture trapped at the center of my iris
you are a beautiful cataclysmic disruption,
come
closer to me, brown eyes
set in a porcelain face
for these feelings cling unto us
like sacred dreams
i know i’m simply me
but please let’s leave
a blackbird will dream
us into life and the sun
will smile hard at us and
our house will be made
of violets

before we fell silent
you said, “I am going to die”
and I couldn't tell if you were being serious
and maybe you couldn’t either
and with each cigarette
those fumbling fingers tore from the box
your eyes flashed
jagged streaks of shame

and now that silence seems endless
because you are in Kentucky
and you’ve blown everything
on making sure the feeling never went away

and your dog died two weeks ago
in your new L.A. flat,
his discarded bones nestled upon a stained grey mattress,
and gnats and flies crawl over his
accusatory eyes
and blood-tinged matted fur,
and the stone mouth drips a
yellow stench that seeps through
the newly wooded floor,
and there he dies,
again and again
still,
raw,
indignant,
because you cannot go home
and look death in the face

and your drum set plays without you now
the awesome thuds still reverberate
through the earth’s worn plaster walls
and abandoned mahogany cabinets
and also in your room with the upside-down bed
and in crowded subway cars and passenger planes
and in the dusty basement where we once
made you drink the whole thing down, then hushed you up
with blank towels and sedatives,
and the sound is deafening