I think she is made of clay. She doesn’t eat or drink. Sometimes she cries a tear for me. Never for us. I shower her in kisses, silk dresses, in jewels. She does not move from her place above my bed. She doesn’t even smile. It isn’t about me but it is. I was too late. I was not enough. I am left with loss and a memory and jewels multiply in my hands so I stuff them in the caves of her collarbones. Her. Not her. A crown appears above my pillow. The clock’s last golden tear slips into the sewage pipe. I ***** rubies and the door does not open anymore. I am the mine and the miner and you are the Madonna, a treasure chest of blood and breath. You are a taker. You drain me. Diamond teeth glint in the streetlamp shadows. I cannot sleep unless in blackness. Suspended over my bed you are the afterfumes of all my dreams. Sometimes I break the spell and you shatter on the floor. I weep, I stamp until my feet are starry pulp, I fall and it is a dance. Quartz grows in crystals in my throat. It is hard to speak. I weave you a new silk dress from rain that falls from the ceiling. I will you back to life. I ask you to forgive me. I forget you are a puppet. In the evening a soft green tear lands on my cheek. It isn’t mine. A crown appears above my pillow. I do not know who it is for.

it is at the window after many
hours where i feel peach clay
peel dropping from my cheeks onto
my mandarin string shirt
i am a fruit on a peach fuzz fish
hook dangled over a
gingerbread city of grape
mauve autos and bandaid box tram cars
circling the ring like
vultures, like pirates, like
all of us with a love of
treasure. the rain hurls
itself into the canals but my
window is dry for whatever reason
and i cannot sleep so early
the lights of the goings-goings-
goings are ice sculpture stars
frozen mid-death mid-catharsis
in an eternal reaching-out, an eternal
going-going-going and i
hang above the gingerbread
city, ripe, flaky,
clay from my cheek
shotgunned by the rain
into the water below

you dressed me all in
white which is nice because never
before did i have a
color.
it was a crash, a caught-you, your
serbian moon settled over
me like a cloak like
dust like space-time
fabric and your
foam bubbled to my
skin in the adriatic
sea. i am a mosaic
of shattered coffee cup china and
white lines painted on a tennis
court in vermont and the snow
that buried me when you drove
away the last
time
i come to you in
white i am sent away in
white
like your moon that settles on my
shoulders like the fog the
smoke you cannot see that
rests on the lake in the early
morning like the flecks of
paint that flutter onto my
desk when i thumbtack a new
photo into the wall
do you know what it’s
like to be sent away in
white

she didn’t have much of a
waist but she had a great
***. she wears a gown, black
or white, probably
black because i always wore  
white.
hushed into the velvet witch of
night she drives her blue
subaru down the lake
road and sings a simple
harmony until the crow
moon carries her back to her plumwood
bed.

last night in the clay
burn of the candlesticks i
met a girl with blue
hair.
she asked me as the room
filled with sleepy smoke if i
would ever want you to read my
story of us
she was cloaked in sky
blue and as we filled with
fog all i could think was that i
know you just moved
house and you didn’t
tell me

you soak me through the
sunlight and sometimes i
think when i walk the shady
streets here that the trees are doing me a
favor

last night i woke
early.
an old woman was going
gardening and i felt you drip
from a dream through my
ears and onto my
pillow