Frost over my hands and feet
Break my fingers off one by one
So I’m reaching for you with saucers devoid of joints
Easily shattered with sharp logic
Only you have read the book before,
And I am usually the one so eloquent and collected,
Falling just short of being bound together

Crash against the surface of my face with a hundred-mile chill
Disappear into the trees again
You are not the forest under elemental pressure,
I have never been the storm
You arrive in me as the devastation
That, laying on my broken spine,
Flooding eyes fracturing the skylight,
I gasp to gather meaning from

An ebullient, sparkling bird I am
On my toes, pinning about the wooden house,
Curling and placing each golden strand
As a game or ritual to become full again
He comes to string me up as lights
The things I ask are of “what does this mean?”
For his, he gives “to create our world, I need light to see.”
I force the door with wool wrapping my feet,
As if he’d ever hear my racket
Before his body felt it

Multiples of flurrying life
Dancing on the country green
My hands warmed of the cup,
And the company of your chest,
I slept by the fire all night
I am all woman and untangled muscles
You stand bare and newly awake at the window
Blinking,
And I cannot tell who is doing the reflecting
The lawn,
Or the aventurine
That through which you see the world
That from which the most subtle gaze
Unfastens me

All too fickle, quick and glossy
As the silent and raging tide
Blinking at me like a twinkling planet
Like Mercury,
I’m convinced you exist
Though to see him bare
Would be to nearly miss it
Heavy handed is the reckless tongue,
All too rare is the fire
Able to weld two jagged, mangled pieces
Undeserved and virginal is the prayer
Making them one

I’ve no body of ivory or pearls,
Even then,
I would blend into the blankness created
So seamlessly painted
If not to give you faith,
These pages upon pages
Are soaked violet in vain

Finally, I hold close to me
That I do not know why the stars flicker in and out
Before going dark once again
They are beautiful still

How the sky glazes over in clouds,
And your raven’s heart
Keeps me just as freezing cold
As icy drops on a window
Hoping for a spring thaw,
Followed by a summer glow
Here,
They feel out of place
Come the next holy day
I’ll make peace with them again
Settling where I belong
Among the meadows and fog

The foreign tongue you speak
Is not of a country known
Or believed
I welcome quiet,
Though complete death of gesture
Deafening silence
Is what you give to me

I do not know why the stars flicker in and out
Before hiding once again
They are beautiful still

I should’ve known
You’d feed me to the forest floor again
I’ve read medieval tales,
Guessed each gluttonous end
The maiden dies by the sword of her love,
Or resigns to playing pretend
I won’t stubbornly awaken
I won’t touch my flesh
To your jagged, poison edge

Your iron briars wither
Down to their sharpest point
Through the deepest wood and bone
They slice

I think to myself,
If you were to leave me
As soon as in the hands of tomorrow
How imprinted,
Pink and new
Would I want your outline
Over my shoulders and hips?
I do not take each new morning for a fool,
For I have tasted years without you
And you have seen death
In your brother’s eyes
Onto lonely wrists,
Your hope splashed and dried
I behave in terms of forever
For I have felt last chances
Fluttering in my hands
I let them bend and crumble
I wish you’d think of our possibilities
Evaporating peacefully
And what you’d do to change fate,
Do tomorrow