Partially lit and yellowing,
seeping in from night, the morning
stale leftover hours, all spent ignoring
the tsunami, the taps
on a shoulder, a warning.

It seems I've filled these grown-up shoes
but I don't know when I grew
because yesterday I was still seventeen
and today I am really twenty-two.

Here it is.

Here is the hole in the stitches of your warmest sleeve.
Here is the emptiness of ice.
Here is the sound that only the loneliest make.

There it goes.

There is the sun, drunk on days, whirling.
There is the delirium that comes sultry with fever.
There is the aching overwhelm of blood returning.

That was the anaesthesia.
Here is the morning after.

I don't like this time of year-
summer's breath down my neck,
chased up sleepless from shorter nights,
tired and dry,
hands that were shaken by day,
the one before
still aching and sore-

day breaks to brittle hours-

sunlight strips, sandpaper scratches,
at the corner of an eye
and all the clutter catches
at the throat's back, dust kicked up
from summer's track-

day breaks the thirsty flowers.

You told me to look the universe right in the eye
but I don't think I'm brave enough,
not quite yet, because all I am thinking
is about what you found when you looked
and saw the nucleus, everything-
all the feral electons- around it, and
the things you once thought you could hold
slipping away from you, from the spaces
hollowed out of you, until you finally felt it:
the emptiness of space.

The night knows all my secrets.
Sometime plucked out from in-between
illusory stars where there were no dreams
during that night just past,
I misplaced myself-
again.
This morning I find fragments
scattered about-
don't remember
anything breaking-
kitchen counter, bathroom tiles,
stairs, crumples on the carpet.
Never in one piece.
All I would want is to find tiny bits,
tiny pieces, in characters
and in phrases imprinted
upon the pages upon pages
of a thousand books
until I'm whole-
again?
Just keep reading.
One day all the nights will have my story to tell.

Things can be beautiful when falling apart
and not always reason for crying.
Just think of a leaf broken free from a tree
or the soft sounds of floorboards, sighing.