stuffing stolen oxygen
into my secondhand bag,
and smiling up at the
butter sun;
the ancient groundskeeper says,
earth mama, you should be
doing pirouettes
in Santa Ana, stumbling
barefoot bright sidewalks
in Albuquerque.

I nod and get in my car
feel my soul twitch
and I am astounded that
the trees haven't
found me out
yet, that the lilies
haven't strangled me
in my sleep
yet.

maybe I’ve been here
too long too long
maybe I need to go
where the sun is
relentless..

1500 miles to Albuquerque

has spring arrived
already?
i brace myself
and wait-
boughs bent  and
naked.

but, there are no
fluttering cherry blossoms
here, nor golden
nightingales.

i brace myself against
promises of gods
and false prophets
shivering in the wind.

cede fortunae,
they say to me.

i was destined
for this.

the room is empty
as a smile, walls that stand
blank as eyes waiting for truth
as i fumble for stolen words
and like children they
spill from outstretched palms.
a gift to the gutters,
a gift to the gods
who laugh in my wake,
inviting me to whiten my bones
among them, among their
house of trees and their
all-knowing shadows.

landlocked words that sit
stagnant in my muscles,
whimpering in cold corners
and clamoring at whitewashed windows.
i want them,
not the labor, not the anesthetics,
but the small, pink-lipped
baby of them.

words like garbage, words
like paper Mache, or as
silent as both.
they are maddening, porcelain,
but they are mine to nurture,
mine to cure,
mine to hold.

you are not
really gone. i
say this to myself.
when the lights are
low and the music
is quiet, when the hum
of some distant furnace
is the loudest sound
that i can hear.

i still think of you
from time to
time; testing the wind
with your feet in the sand;
or striking notes like
the death of love
in the purple halo
of twilight on your
front steps.

i still reach for you
from time to time;
but my hands
return to me
empty.

i still miss you
from time to time,
but I cannot secrete
the venom from your
backward glances;
nor could I tell you how
our future shone with golden
strips of sunlight,
a pinpoint of it
dancing in your stratosphere.

so, i’m writing the future
in the corners of my mind
and convincing myself
that nothing is permanent;
and that one day, you
will return to me, with
the sun strapped to your back,
re-gifting that which had been
taken when you left me
smoldering in your wake.

and i’m glad just to be
floating around in your atmosphere,
because the view is so lovely
from here. your face like marble,
carved out by the the wind,
and I dare you to bend
like winter twigs or golden light,
one of those things, you never could hold.

one of those things were never here at all.
nor the curve of the wineglass,
as your fingers twisted through air,
and the pieces scattered like mercury,
gleaming as bright as your teeth;
licking for something more tender,
something more meek.

i steal flashes of light and pin them
to the sun’s greedy eye for you,
like the brink of extinction.
it is more like a rebirth; the trees burning
and heaving their limbs like lungs.
it is a changing of seasons, and
it is all, it is all that I can do.

i linger at portholes shaped like your eyes,
gorged somewhat with nostalgia,
but i can move on through the chemical highs
and the lovely dramatics of reds on a stereo blue.

i can stand on things that are uneven.
oh, see how we’ve grown.

you were so beautiful
that you were ugly,
like mercury, you
ominous shape shifter.
i couldn't pinpoint it.

you told me you loved me
but love was just a fallacy;
a promise that couldn't be kept,
an expectation that couldn't be met.

dead stars and bleeding hearts,
landmines and orchestra song,
sun like knives, and
deafening silence;
all of it had never meant
less to me.

perhaps its only when
you'd rather wake up
with a bullet between your teeth
that you really learn
how to live,

how to love
something with
a pulse.

you came, dragging
cardboard shackles in
your wake and fell upon
my floor like the final
messiah.

surrounded by these walls
that I built for you, and
the props that I live by;
a porcelain cat ticking
time on his paws, and
a blue fish swimming laps,

you fold into origami birds
and exhale debris into
the moonlight, sighing
a breath of defeat.

i cannot decipher it.
i remember how you looked
when you were mine,
how you spoke when you
belonged here.

you are strange to me now.
i cannot pinpoint your
watercolor edges nor iron out the
fissures where your smile hides.

i want to take you in my arms
and place you in my bed.
i want to play chopin from memory
for you and carve figures out of wind,
carry you across the threshold
on gilded fingertips;

but you are no longer
mine to form, and
i do not follow.