I do not know your name—
only your silhouette
etched in the echo of things I was not given.
Your absence was my alphabet.
I spelled every woman with your ghost.


They loved me.
But I loved you through them.
Your hands behind their voices.
Your eyes haunting their praise.
They were flesh, and I was kneeling.


I made gods of strangers.
I made homes of hunger.


Mother—not mother.
Lover—not lover.
I could not hold the difference.
They all became symbols
and I became a shrinekeeper,
tending lies with tenderness.


Forgive me,
those I touched but never saw.
I was trying to reach through you
and forgot you were not them.
And they were not you.
None of you asked for this altar.


I am dismantling the myth.
I am returning the light.

We’d all love
To be seen
Little more
Than we clean
Up the messes
Attesting
To low
Self-esteem
And it seems
We’d all hate
To be torn
At the seams
But we love  
To watch others
Unreachable dreams
And yet hate to feel
Fairness is trampled
Pursuing
The knocks
Of the opportune
Peacemakers
Couping
Who we love to hate
Hate to love
The cartoonish
Banality
Evil
Still mirroring
Munich

Bereft breaths
Under the canopy
Of this old one
Bark covered shade watches over me
Like a blanket of shadow
A sea of hands holding onto
But all I hear is echoes,
Ringing through this hallowed
Hollow hole you left to hide me.

If only I could get up,
Stand on weighted feet
To press forward shield steadying me
Hoping this could be my retreat
Vacancy for one and I rest my head sojourn .

I’m searching, some where past the distance
Foreclosing on my ramparts
Fault line fissures crackle,
Open ripples in the deep cuts
Repair or compensate for failures
Regrets creep and blur vision.