The moon weeped
the color of your hair,
dripping onto the  
morning (mourning?) dew
stippled grass.
The color of your eyes
seeped
into the cracks
of every sidewalk
you melted
on.

Bow Tie Noose

I saw you die in mid-January. Your caramel eyes rolled back white like ****** hard candies when you hanged yourself with the bow and bell I tied around your neck. I want to lay you down in a coffin made for kittens, old shoebox turned grave. I'll wrap your wrists in silk, cover your eyes with your hands, let guilt leap out of your mouth with a quiet gaseous slipping pop, death swelling your stomach just above your jutting ribs. This is the fullest you've looked since eighth grade, you've been starving and your blood is all drained. I'll put you under the only living thing to weep for you, a sad old willow tree. She's on her last leg and I guess, so are we. It will be summer, fresh lemonade. Shooting rabbits from the back of a pick up truck, ******* the blood from a pin hole in the neck. Dad likes them dry by July.

I'll watch flowers grow in place of cardboard. I'll remember your tiny birdy bones in your hands and see them melting to the flesh of your eyelids, nature taking you back to melted wax figure. Your teeth are more recognizable than your face.

When winter comes again, you'll wash up in the spring and the police will wonder who did this. I'll pluck a bone from inside your eye socket where it fell to rest. I'll look at your clothes, the new skin over your bones, it's all the same. Your cheeks aren't so smiley now that you're not in there to scare yourself into happiness. At least you won't be lying while lying in a grave, I'll keep your bones in the drawer with your letters and the police dogs won't smell a thing.

I am a silent monstrosity in the heavy and deep belly of the earth
I sit, carving my teeth out with
Nail clippers, chiseling bone like soap
I melt through my tongue with acetone
Like wax
Like wax, I am, like wax
Still and dripping, falling faces and hiding places in the darkest parts of museum floorboards

I. I rest my ear to your chest and hear the thudding of foot steps down the stairs, Christmas morning. God is telling me to stop listening. He wants you to wait until 5 am to open the gift that is your rib cage. 5 am is when we bring out the box cutter.

II. I wipe the tears off your face. You clean up good, you look like sunshine, kid. You may be shaking but your bones are as steady and as sturdy as they've ever been. You don't tie something up and tug the strings without a little muscle.

III. I'm looking back, just through the telescope of a few months, and ****, do you ever stop shaking? It's not even winter anymore, maybe the reason your bones are so sturdy is because they're so ******* frozen. Wake that body up boy, it's 75 degrees out. You're not ******* cold anymore.

IV. This isolation you're feeling, it's just a feeling. You've never felt more alone, but here you are, sitting in a room full of people. Maybe you can't see them all, yeah, a lot of them are ghosts, but didn't they teach you something? Anything?

V. Can you offer me any hope at all? None? None?