the shutters are kept a jar closed this morning. i will only see out of one eye. my own blue light vibrates, hollows out my greying stomach leaving space to think - - you should’ve reached out but i can’t get my hand past the edge of my bed, so i use my hands instead to harden my molten tongue and soften my clenched cheeks. a sour gap between chin - - belly. rolling a mushy blade of grass between my fingers - - stretching a water bottle - - kicking the end of my bed - - do you feel empty? she said. I said  - - like unthreaded needles? like tupperwear unfilled?  - - is that empty? you felt like silk disrupted with the crease on your forces and i tried to collect the other day but you weren’t even there it was some other guy i only see you when i buy bags of must i miss the hugs you gave from ear to floor but now you’re cheating on me with yourself and now i’m a zippo without fluid and you’re the first *** packet without a number and without a warning and i'm without - -

You were the anti-glow.
A ball of soot, sunk
in pools of polyester.

You dented the lines of your
encyclopedia - ingested
images of the panther, the puma

and sat somewhere between
black ant and black bear
hibernating under towels of burnt tulle.

You fell off pastel lines
into charcoal smudge,
undersaturated, a pen-test-scribble,

a parachute in negative space
to protect your smoke-wisped skull.

You bought the house with lavender
seeded in the front porch.
The scent flutters between the doorsill
and through the letterbox
like bills overdue and invoices outstanding. A postal aroma,
envelope glue smells like flowers to me.

I was never granted the privilege of rearranging flowers
You said, there was more to life than flora,
these emerald, sap dripping, saturated stems
Swelling petals fascinated under my untried eyes,
You said I must not even graze the things.

I longed for a taste of the forbidden flora.
Did buds taste like honey? Were they sour like you told me?
Would they poison these supple
and innocent lips, turn them pink to grey?
Could tastebuds kiss the perennial vines,
the posies, the spray of efflorescence
A taste of simple sweetness -

I remember when you ripped the front-porch-lavender.
The roots could not resist your claws.
You sweat to mutilate strained flowers,
You always work harder. Verdure spoiled.
Ravaged, ruptured, tanked soil.