I woke up alone
And to tell you the truth,
I fell asleep that way too.

But then
The in-between.

I stood at my kitchen window
And I heard the distant voices
And forgot for a moment

The way you’d forget a kettle on the stove
But here I am now,
The whistling in my ears
Shrieking in a syncopated curse,
Alone again alone again alone again alone again alone again

I collect memories like
Grains of sand in my braids

Silken tides usher in new eras
As old ones fall in piles on my floor
Here an epoch, there an age
Unity in treasured obsolescence

Mausoleum of the time I under-loved
It lingers in my bedsheets
Burying the wooden floors
I track through, leaving mislaid
Heartbreaks, scattered days
In castle shapes
They wait

And with the winds of change
The desert flies into my face,
My eyes;
And salt springs forth
It greets the grains again
The ones I thought were boulders
Half a thousand years ago.

This poison you feed me
This head wound
Inflicting and compounding;
You will never understand

You size me up
In funhouse mirrors,
Tape measures all stretched out
Because you hate me
And so I cry

I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
I’m sorry I’m so big
I want to be small
Teach me to be small
Or, instead,
Teach me not to have a face
So you do not see me anymore
Please

The sweetness of a dehydrated body,
Tired, weak, blameless,
Addicted
Downing only buckets of saccharine hatred
It smells like cancer and bubblegum,
And that’s just as well

It tastes like
Blood

I am reaching
Weeks later and I am
Reaching, still

My arm is not tired
I am only reaching

The days pass like raindrops
On a windshield
Over my arm
Outstretched

And moss begins to grow on it
And cracks begin to form

You have no idea
How long I’ve spent reaching before

Wanton words that trace your heart
Are cross-stitched over mine
Tunnel vision makes the sky look sweet and close

I'm left searching for my question in the mazes of "I do"
But when I find it,
The clouds are back where they belong:
Indifferent,
Intangible as she breezes through,
But drenching me so beautifully when they return again

Spelling 'mayday' for me and 'marry me' for her,
But I see neither, for with the haze itself
I am encircled as the mountaintops
Horizons and their reason out of sight