She bobs in the water
pale cork, pale-haired
lily pad with tendrils in the
deep cold dark.
(Stones in her pockets,
they said later, a Virginia Woolf
rip-off.)
I see her from my bay window.
She gleams as she floats;
she startles the ducks.
I wait for the joggers to find her,
bouncing along asphalt until
they trip on the light slanting
off her.
It's early, though.
The sky is still bleary-eyed and bloodshot.
Red sky dances along the water.

Do I dare disturb the universe;
this mellow sun warmed rock
upon which you sit
green scaly lizard,
teeny puke green dragon.
I'll bash you with a cactus,
rip off its skin and scratch you,
but squeeze the honeydew insides
into my desert dry mouth.

I rest, still, thin, the eyelash on your cheek,
brushed off when midnight blue melts into peach.
And when you steal away this room will reek
of ***, smoke, and gin. Echoes of slurred speech,
and cigarettes smoldering exhaled breath,
haunt two souls spun in liquor and lost dreams.
We chased and tried to hold that little death.
Groaning, clutching, I watched the ceiling's beams,
and thought about him sleeping, home, alone.
He sits between us now, a ghost in pink,
a morning dove cooing. Soft hearted stone,
you pull tight your steel-colored tie, a drink
of warm gin, button your coat, close the door.
I fold back rumpled sheets, but what for?

Eight stories up a
chrome and glass building,
with twelve thousand people peeking out behind
chintzy curtains,
I pace.
My stomach leaks tension and the
phone hasn't rung yet.
TV's too loud, Discovery Channel
playing sharks with crooked teeth
and heavy ***** eyes.
They are familiar, the sharks. They peek too,
behind curtains of water and
doomed fish.

Clinking my spoon on the white ceramic
plate, I count the steamy curls from my
coffee and the spots of yellow in
your blue eyes.
I want to take this coffee, pour it straight into
my stomach. I want to take your yellow-
spotted eyes and eat them like
sweet seedless grapes,
take them in so no one
else can see.

The moon sits on my
tongue.
Like snow, it melts, drops
of winter, cold white wine,
like I ****** the light out of a
lightning bug, lemony glow coating
my teeth.
I swallow the moon.
I swallow it like I swallow words,
raspberries to crush against the roof of
my mouth.
I want to eat all the words in the world,
every last one sitting warm and
ready in my belly, spoons of honey or
hot metal,
or cold and hard in my throat like
stones or cool cucumber slices.
I want them to
fill me, clutter my thoughts and lungs and
settle under my nails and on the tips of my
eyelashes to dust
my face every
time I
blink.

Sly second skin hanging off my bedpost or
curled under my pillow.
It climbs into my dreams,
snugs up against me, the thinnest safest skin.
These words are my epidermis
pulled tight over me like a hood or a sheet
or socks and I can tell
anyone anything.