I woke one morning feeling like
I didn’t belong in my own
        body—
that the skin I saw was not my own
but the flesh of a cadaver;
I thought that the bones within me
must be made of balsa wood and
the deteriorating muscles were surely
thin strips of fabric with
no actual value.

I decided that it was not me on the inside,
but someone else.

The sky outside my window was only
a meager, pale shade of grey, like the ashes
of what her body used to be, and I
watched as the pale pink ribbon of
the horizon began to bleed with the birth
of a new day and I thought about how
all those words you said to me
were actually time bombs because when
you first said them, I brushed them off
but now all I can think about is them and
my brain has been blown
        to kingdom come.

I think I might be brain dead.

But your school picture is still on my
bedside table and when I look at it
a fist grips down on my heart and
I wonder how you are and if you’ve grown,
I wonder if you’re even still alive anymore;
my anxiety is a yew tree bending in a
new formation influenced by the passing
of time and minimal communication—
I become someone I don’t know.

I think that we’re all born with
a different destiny to follow but
when you get right down to it,
no matter how much you’ve changed, or
how much I’ve changed,
on the inside, we’re all the same—
        skeletons.

Except for the fact that I think I might be a
barely surviving Hiroshima victim;
a charred skeleton with no other
contributing human element.

Sometimes I compare you to
        Chernobyl
and I wonder if you ever
draw that connection
too.

I wonder what it’s like to be nuclear.

I wonder what it’s like to burn alive.

There are dark clouds churning in the
early morning sky and I wonder if it
might storm again like it did on that
night when I drove home alone and
that one song was playing on the radio
over and
                over and
                                over again
and I couldn’t possibly shut it off because
who was I to end the life of a beautiful,
(highly relatable),
song when it was just growing out of its
babbling infancy and into its
crescendoing teenage years?  

If I were to write you a letter now
I wonder what I would say,
what I would tell you that I haven’t already,
(accidentally), spilled to you in those
rushed visits we had every blue moon—

I think I would tell you how you
        broke my heart;
I think I would tell you how he
        shattered what was left;
I think I would tell you how
I don’t believe I have a
soul
                        anymore.

There’s a picture perfect
moon in the sky and
all I can think about is
        you

(which doesn’t make sense
because the moon in the heavens and
all the stars in the galaxy have
nothing to do with you and I).

I think it’s because it was you who I
told all my secrets to,
you who I confided in—I think it’s because
I trusted you.  

Sometimes I look up at the cosmos and
wonder what type of angel she is
and then I wonder if I ever told you
my deep, dark thoughts about
what happened.  

I can’t remember.

My mind is as thick and heavy
as my tongue feels—
        fog
everywhere and I cannot see
where I am going, much less
where I have come from.

There’s something inside of me that,
like a caged dog, is awaiting to be
unlocked from its restraining bars and
I don’t know where to start talking without
sounding like an absolute madman.

I think that this poem has transformed from
a few lines about you to
a few lines about her and to be honest,
I don’t remember the last time
        I wrote about her

(but I guess I should try).

I was a child when I first went to bed
and a teenager as I turned in my sleep—
we could be twins, she and I,
with our closed eyes, and
visions of stars at night and
        pale complexions like
the sand on the beach basking
in the glow of the hanging moon.

I wonder if she met Samael.
I wonder if he was nice.

They told me how much I looked like her;
they gushed about how we had the
same personality, same sense of humor,
but I didn’t want to hear a word they said—
I don’t think I could stand to look
myself in the mirror if that were true
because it would be a constant reminder of
        her
and I don’t want to be reminded.

I think that we all start off as angels and
that somehow we end up here,
bound down to a life full of interactions
and paths to cross and plans to make;
I think that we all finish as angels and
that somehow we end up there,
no longer a single form and single being,
we become infinite once more.  

But then I remember that even Lucifer,
himself, once wore white wings and I think
that sometimes we’re no better than him—
that I’m no better than him.

I hope Raphael can fix us and
I pray that Uriel can set us straight
because in this aphotic world, I want
to be able to see straight down into
        into the abyss.

I want to see you through unbiased eyes and
hear you through impartial ears the way
that I used to be able to until that night
outside your house.  

I want to tell you all of these things I think
about the two of us—
all these things I think about my
        mother
and that night and those days
in which it happened.

Just please don’t clip my wings.

And in the grasp of
the moon’s tight fist
I thought you looked like an angel,
like Gabriel—
        an Archangel.

I thought that should the
sun come up in a few hours
that you would perhaps fade away
into nihility—
        into stardust.

I thought you were the
most beautiful thing I’d ever seen
and I thought that you weren’t even real;
completely artificial—
        a mannequin.
        
You looked so childish in your
sleep and oh how I longed to
push aside those stray
golden locks—
        your halo.

But like a Seraph—
        you burn.

It was on a crisp autumn night that I
sat alone beside you
for the first time in nearly four years.

The shadows of the looming pines surrounding me
seemed to press and pressure my eyes to slip
down six feet under along with

the bleeding sun as it continued to
decamp from the sky.  It slid so smoothly
past the towering pines while the
silvery fist of the moon
shoved it roughly back to the west;
I thought about how you mustn’t like the night
because of the chill that often comes
hand in hand with the darkness.  

For a moment, I considered
the slight possibility of my body heat
leaching down through the earth
and into your bones.

I wondered how cold it is to
sleep underground and then I
wondered if angels felt the
creeping chill of the
foreshadowing frost in the first place.

I thought that everything significant
must happen on Thursdays because
your book began and ended on
                  the fifth day—
born on the same day of the week
you and I compare and contrast
like long
                  lost
                             twins.

Sometimes I half-expect to see
your ghost staring back at me
when I look in the mirror and to be
completely honest, I’m not sure
what I’m more afraid of—
the possibility that you might not be the same
or the chance that you might be so
disappointed in what you see in me
now that we are separated.

The divide between us runs deep
into the earth and creates a whole
new fault line, rent and ruptured
beyond all forms of repair.

The breath I breathe is the
bridge between us;
the bed you sleep in is the
total distance.

He never wrote me
love letters like
Heathcliff and Catherine and
all the other grandiose characters
in those old, Victorian Romance
novels.  In fact,
he never wrote to me
         at all.

Not a single word,
a single letter;
not even his name
on an otherwise
blank sheet of paper
roughly shoved into an
already used envelope.

Maybe he took my words and
burned them like my dog’s
ashes like Auschwitz and
Californian forest fires.

An abrupt end to
an abrupt start
created and destroyed
by the sure hands of God.  Mother,
you were never one for words.

I thought perhaps I’d
have a dream.  See
your face in the mirror;
feel your presence walk
through a door.  But
what childish hopes to hold
in the frigid face of reality.

Cold like the snow (you loathed to shovel)
like a can of Diet Pepsi on a hot summer day
(your favorite)
like global warming seasons
and the chocolate bunnies you
used to put in the fridge
(for Easter).

Cold like corpses
your corpse
six feet under—
tombstone in the sun,
no light will ever warm you.

Dearest mother,
I have not heard
a single word
from you in
over four years.

Dearest mother,
dearest mother,
dearest mother

what do your wings look like?

I could never date a smoker.

Flowers in the house don’t bring beauty,
      only death.
Aesthetically pleasing,
a platonic seduction that is
tempting yet entirely depressing—

I will not watch you die.

Like a wet séance,
tea lights lined the
porcelain frame of the old
bucket tub, as if the
closed-eyed occupant
within its liquid depths
was trying to form
a connection between
what is and
        what could have been.

One year since Chernobyl
erupted in your brain,
spotted like a favorite
sweatshirt in the lost and
found, it was snatched
up,
        up,
                and away
along with you and
who you used to be.

Brushed affectionately by
Death’s boney hand,
I wonder if anything
scares you
        anymore.

I wonder if I could be fearless like you.

I sat side by side
next to my dog upon
the burgundy leather sofa and
followed his line of sight
out the great glass window
into the desolate,
snow covered forest.

“What can you possibly
                see?”
I ask.

After a few moments of
silence, he looks to me and
says, “Sometimes it’s not
as much as what I see
as it is what I
                        find.
This woods speaks the truth;
you just have to look for it
in yourself first.”

I can feel you
in the cold winter air,
nipping at my cheeks
and freezing over my toes.  You
are the bloodied and broken
skin on my hands that
just
         won’t
                      heal.

Breathe in,
breathe out—
you are visible in my
sub-zero breath.

I can’t stand Christmas
lights because they
reflect your eyes and I
can’t take holiday
songs because they
parallel your voice.

Mother, neither of us
ever really liked the winter.