Sunset smoked itself a desert fire.

Somewhere across the Atlantic,
you were busy painting your own horizon
when the steps of morning met the sea.

That night you learned clocks don't really tick,
just shiver and sigh.

This morning, I dream of a birch tree bench
upon which she strews jars of sea glass,
filled with blues and greens or something inbetween.

Sunlight shifting like prismarine snakeskin,
shed where sky meets eye, dyes the white wood underneath
in bisecting lines that ripple and breathe.

Thumbing at sea glass, I see her smile, circa redress,
in a pile of polaroids passed over the wood by
hands neither she nor I possess.

And then I see me, my head leaned into hers,
two gray trees grown too free. Hairs tangle and end
centimeters from the edge of the bed.

We look
together.
That’s when I cry.

Beneath two trees planted too close,
below silver halide wiping blue and green from her eyes,
in black ink that's yet to dry, she leaves a note
that I can’t read
because
this is a dream
and we were the lie.

we all have our reasons for not being able to breathe.

Don't let Anyone
make You feel
like Holding
onto Forever
is a Must
after all
Everything you
love
is just Well
arranged Dust

When God sowed darkness and the Devil a *****,
Abuela dug so deep
her oldest son fell through.

I dangled my constellations like ghosts that might
carry him to the surface,
a grip hard as ice,
a grip twice as thin.

Inertia yanked ten in two --
five fingers, pop;
ten fingers, stop --
he took them all down, the
tendons’ endless unfurling.
I, ladder, endlessly descending.
He, father, ends up standing.

I know I called you
a cupcake without any makeup on
so that my friends would laugh
as I picked you apart on the cafeteria table.

But when they left,
I held your crumbs together
and reminded you that you were healthier.