I can see right through you;
the cogs turning
within your chest
as though your flesh
were naught but
glass and mirrors.

I can see those things
that you wanted to keep
shut up inside of you-
the black melancholia
that pulls at your skin
and the voices
you keep trying to hush.

I can see through you,
all of you,
into landscapes
less numinous
when superimposed
over barren ground
and eyes that glint
like topaz.

Listless airwaves
wreak havoc across
my sun scorched
landscape.

I bend into
snapdragon
position,
lilt like August wheat
and regroup,
regenerate
my amphibious
limbs.

But I am not bold
or strong
or any of those things
that you said
when you were trying
to talk me back
from the precipice
of my jagged mind.

I am pigeon toed
and meek,
stuffing sticky sweet
secrets
into the cracks
of my palms
and turning my face away
from the lights.

I am not,
I am not
any of those things
that you said,

but I'm trying;

You come and you go,
repetitive dream motions
driving a picture of
your face
into my little mouse heart.

Apparition of sleepless nights,
you smile- drop your bags
on my bedroom floor.
I nursed your broken bones
and kissed your fingertips,
crushing the passage of
time in my small hands
like so many impatiens.

And then came the storm clouds,
and you traveling north-
leaving no trace
of what once was;

only memories
like ashes
dissolving
in the rain.

and suddenly it was as though
all of those fleeting moments
that I had been grasping for,
all of those feelings
slipping through my periphery,
all of those things
that I could never quite
taste-
they came rushing into me.

And suddenly, I understood
what it was that was escaping me.
I knew exactly what it felt like
to see my heart beating
in someone else's body;
I heard my thoughts
spilling across your lovely lips
and saw my spark
reflected in your eyes,
speaking languages
that I wanted to learn.

I spilled forth all of the rusted,
mildewed things that were hiding
in the recesses of my memories,
and I held them up to the light
and let you touch them,
turn them over and hold them.

And that old feeling
in the helplessness of
my naked soul
was replaced with
a lucid sense of weightlessness.

I found you, and I thought
that you might be able
to know me,
to really know me,
without turning away.

Regrets take root
in my decomposing heart
and fruiting bodies take hold
of my brain, like
cordyceps without a purpose-

Leaving this pale exoskeleton,
devoid of light or sound.
I shuffle through empty rooms
that once rang with your laughter,
staring at the floor as if I could
divine answers from spaces
that you once tread.

And I think I'd like to learn
how to escape this state
of suspended animation,
how to feel something again,
but my body is so heavy
with this sorrow
that produces no tears,
no bloodshed,
only a foreboding miasma
that sits at the edge of my thoughts-

A death sentence
to the woman who tries
to hold oceans
inside a thimble.

I said your name aloud
in the candlelight,
like a small séance
for unrequited love.

I waited for you to haunt me
with your voice and quiet smile,
and felt a ghost of you
brush my cheek.

But when I reached for you
the candles only flickered
and the room was screaming
with unbearable silence.

Skies like sheets of shale
floated above our pretty heads,
shedding fat drops of rain
upon an unseasonably warm
December day in Michigan.

I broke free from your grip
beneath our shared plastic umbrella,
ran into the yard
and spun around six times,
arms outstretched like an albatross,
face upturned to the miles and miles
of unbroken grey clouds.

I stopped and called to you,
fly with me.
as my palms turned up
and reached for you, involuntarily.

You laughed, staccato,
and your ambiguous smile
was nothing more than
an ugly daguerreotype
set before a landscape
of compassionate trees.

I'd rather not get wet,
you said

and I think
I've always resented you
for that.