You are not my children,
tender as you are.
You are not my lover,
though you cause my heart to yearn.
You are not my sun,
or my moon,
or my star.

I set you on this rock;
you will not make me burn.

You are simply sticks,
arranged upon the pyre.
You are clever tricks,
though you flaunt my clear desire.
You are not the match,
or the wick,
or the fire.

I set you on this rock;
To see what might transpire.

You will never be a pheasant's egg to be coddled.
You are only this: a calf led to the slaughter.

I'm collecting each passing moment
with a pinch of salt and sugar
sprinkled in my memory

One, two, three shakers full.

but the sands of time keep slipping
through my mortal fingers

I keep an empty jar on the top shelf.

and everything else is a blinding mishmash
of my mind in the morning light.*

Please don't look under the bed, it's embarrassing
what I forget to think about.

Is that still you?
I remember days of not breathing
at the thought of your last breath,
of loose words
and using them to carefully twist
a heartstring hammock.

I can't see past the red in your eyes now,
the spots on your face like footprints, track marks,
soft and tired,
hard like needles.
They stripe your skin as if for an ancient battle,
for a war that soaks your empty spaces in kerosene
and scrapes the match off your wrist.

So while these butterflies pull my stomach
out my mouth, to the floor,
and your feet shuffle from the bombs erupting
down to your toes...
I can't bear the thought of a cloudless conscious,
of reality too close to the glass.
The thought that I can't save you from this,
because all I want
is to burn down with you.

Distances waiting,
breaking mystique in free fall,
shook pills from the clouds.