This morning I woke up wondering
if my sister in the spirit world could see me
and if she could why would she let me fall
into only four short hours of sleep
why would she let me bleed put on the floor
till all I felt was the knife in my gut all day
twisting and churning under the confused gaze of
two
four
six
eight men
I've lost track
lost track of time and space and the number of times they've forgotten my name
why would she let them forget my name
leave me lying there staring at the empty void sky
like static, its stasis but turbulence
all in one
why would she let me fall

can someone tell me where i am?
its dark in here with no light left
for me to see why it's so warm
something is soft, like breath,
breath on my face one inch away,
is rubbing against me, a blanket
i can feel it, around me, inside me
pulling me down into emptiness
but that nothing isn't alone,
no, that nothing is everything
because there is you

hellos and how are yous
just menial things
in comparison to that look
i can see in your eyes
when you glance my way
its singing silently in that awful,
off-tune voice of yours
and its always made me
toss and turn inside with
nausea but now there's
feathers tickling me
making me laugh

my heart's an iceberg that sinks ships
and wrecks the ocean's currents
i am a brick wall you cannot scale
and my guards are strong enough
to shoot you down
but you've become something like ivy
climbing up within me and tearing me apart
brick by brick
to build a meadow of destruction
for us to lay in together

sometimes when it gets late at night
and i see you up watching the news
again
and
again
i remember the tinker toys
down in your cool basement

it smells like must and dirt
and dust now covers the rocking horse
where i would sit and watch you rock me
the play set still looks like a jungle
the small animals are still cold to the touch
the table tennis at the edge of the wall
sits motionless

sometimes when it gets late at night
and i see you up watching the news
again
and
again
i think of when i could still love you
and when you knew my name

if there were clocks that would send me back
before the time when the neighborhood
was full of toddlers and dying men
when the rain puddles still fell lightly
beneath my still-small galoshes,
i would use them and bring you with me
we'd look at each other with hazel eyes
dripping with the stars and the memories
of our distant futures, far from our miniature grasp,
and talk about flowers and their place in our hearts
and crawl through the mud without our raincoats
to find the worms in the dirt, to build them a
kingdom of sticks and dust
with a moat running through it and we would rule
despite our ever-changing bodies
and our once separate lives

i'd make sure to place you in the empty house
right next to mine
and we'd start again
as brothers

eons of tears are streaming down her face
a rainshower of the past and forgotten
exploding into a waterfall
she doesn't know why the storm came now
but she knows that she's got no reason for it
and it makes the thunder grow louder