You've taken too long to come haunting,
wading through instances of mud, of regret,
until my wanting has all but dissolved.

You've broken my spine with curious fingertips,
an innocent ghost with fireplace eyes,
where questions went unnoticed, unsolved.

You've come knocking with empty cages,
pulling behind what you'd begged to forget,
you spoke to my spine like needles, absolved;

until my teacups are dust on the shelves
and your flowers don't wilt, but burn,
of stove and house and noose and all.

A sea of glass eyes
plagues my waking, breathing, fault
dries my brain with salt

that night, I saw bodies in the motel bathtub
beckoning like a 50's Cadillac
back seat beats and Father's  
bottle of snatched brandy up
to bring back our youth

and stay
for one last whisper in a last-innocent ear
the diner lights buzzing like
a lifetime of loss to mistakes
that can be little more or
less than broken glass lies

You woke like windows,
shattered in Jewish hellfire,
shade by burning books.

I'm with you in the bluegrass, swaying like the ocean's floor
singing like we used to dream of all the things we'd one day see;
     I'm with you under florescent bulbs, of late night cubicles
laughing in tune with the hum of his fax machine at our inside jokes;
     I'm with you at every gas station, a blanket-full truck bed
crunching every loss under my boot heal, taking us back to perfection;
     I'm with you tying shoelaces
     and each sigh of the new moon,
     of every heart or new blood wound;
You--you're with every piece of me, familiar like childhood scars,
tear salt soaked and burning like ritual fires in each corner of world,
in wanting of my body to be sewn, to rise back and reclaim ours, anew.

There's something so powerful
about looking up at the night sky
and knowing that
all the mistakes you made
today and yesterday
are gone.

At the end of the day
you are still
a galaxy
within
a galaxy.

f.m.s.

summer night sweats
and whispers in the hay lofts
forgot our purpose