i know you
said you had no interest in visiting
europe but last night i had a
dream that you met me in
ireland.
i have never been and neither have
you but we rode in an old car to the
cliffs.
sheet sky tangerine
orange fire in the
ocean water burns just like my inner
thighs burn right
now.
you are laughing and you kiss
me in front of this brilliant
painting this brilliant firey
explosion it is
God and it is
summer. i wake
up and i am in the rain
on the street
corner where you picked me
up in your new car the last time i saw
you in december.
the new year is
tomorrow and you are in
boston. it rains and
i am alone
on the street in
december.

the old woman I
saw was the caretaker of the
garden of ******* and i had come at
peak season.
back of a lonely metal
gate in water-town they
pulsed up from a circle of
eggshells smooth and imported
soil fine grounds of
woman.
i felt with my eyes
cranberries my tongue
red.
our caretaker feeds eyelash and
honeycomb i see my face in its sticky
reflection i
drip and wet
velvet garden unfolds to my touch of
early summer

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

i sit on
cement because there is no
beach. i biked here to smell the
sea and listen to soft broken TV
waves
often times air smells
like something at least but this air smells
like nothing empty.
it doesn’t smell even of
sun maybe this is what the space of cement smells like in your
throat.
i sit on
cement because there is no
beach. i must be on top of a
gutter because the sound is not
grey fuzz but glug
glug like a stone throat trying to
swallow a gallon of milk in one
go.
glug glug seaside cement
symphony i don’t like
milk.

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

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

this is me expressing
straight up
i am so much more grateful for having
met you than i am
hurt that you are
gone.

we sat down on this tennis
court under the sky and outer
space had eaten it
up and was hanging from the trees and
stars were landing on my
cheeks. time was flushed away and everything happened
at once without
order. we sat across from each other and
looked. my clay face was being
shaped to every burning movement of
her eyes. the only air that existed was
the air we shared that cycled through my
lungs and then hers. with each breath more of
her seeped into my
blood. she was wearing a
sweatshirt that was probably
grey. her shirt underneath it
was soft like it always
was. i am sick of the word
beautiful. i want something else something
more accurate something less
hollow something less
nothing but i cannot think of
a word. i am sitting on this tennis
court and she is also sitting
up and we are
intertwined. you know
how one person’s legs go
under and one person’s
legs go
over and then you are both sitting
up and your chests are an inch
apart. so i am sitting
there and i am feeling ****** by just how
beautiful she is. i am thinking for the millionth
time that she is the
most exquisite living
thing i have ever looked at. she is like a centuries-
old statue carved from a
stone that no longer
exists, she is dug
up from a lake of
nectar and it is
different than a centuries-old
statue because she carries the
life of the whole
world. it is that tape in my head
again, you are so
beautiful you are so beautiful you are so
beautiful. i am in absolute
awe. i don’t think anymore. she
tells me she doesn’t see
herself this way. at all. she sees crooked
teeth and anything but what i
see. woman
birthed from a planet like
venus but infinitely more,
more, purple sea lush living
garden golden
soil. have you ever felt so
shocked that your thoughts
stop. i have never been at such a
loss for
words. i think maybe my
mouth dropped open. i don’t
know what to
say because it is something i
cannot possibly fathom. that she doesn’t
see it. it is clear as
nothing to me and she doesn’t
see it. it was utter
disbelief and
i felt it on behalf of the entire
world. my hands were
combing through her soft
hair and feeling her soft
shoulders and cupping her
neck like anything i
did could crack. i was
balancing on the
edge of this
gorge and if i move all the china
shatters. can i move here. the air is
different. it’s sweet and it is
thick with whatever fills
black holes which is
nothing and i guess this makes
sense because i think my
lungs could have filled and
expanded mercury
oxygen miles
and miles. she tells me she is
nervous, she hasn’t felt this
way about someone in a
while, she thinks this could be
for a long time, it probably won’t
happen now, that’s
okay. she tells me she is
nervous, she is
bundled in this sweatshirt that
was probably grey and she speaks so
softly and her words bounce
gently between packed
molecules of various
planets until they land with
me and i am
weightless. it took me weeks to
write down what i
felt in this moment. i was
looking for adjectives which are
useless when
you can see. in this bundled
moment i see
myself looking into her
face and the tree
branches lower down to brush
away the world and there is my
face, there is my
face and there are stars reflecting in my
eyes. they reflect what i am
watching so intently. this girl
made of things the earth
doesn’t have. the top curve of the
atmosphere was dusted
away with  one
breath and i was blown into a
place i cannot come
down from. cannot come back from.
i realize only at the
end of this stream that this
is the moment i fell in
love.

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.

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

ink
I am. more with
every day you are silent
i fill pages of
excuses for you i
leak steady from
my mouth my hands i am
every curve every stain every
line in this notebook but so are
you.

i make
you into other with
my words. into lost
ink drip-drip-
drip into wooden
splinter or cement
wall you cannot hear
me.
into an ocean i am
one one side of it and i thought i
felt you across the basin writing me a
letter but you have
swallowed the other
shore. is it better to feel you
as ink splinter cement the
void of a destination disappeared or
as what you
are?
my sun, you haven’t
called me
back.

all nice parks give me
vertigo.
i thought at first maybe it
was just that one park but i am
here again and i feel
sick.
i didn’t come to write only
about you but i guess i also
knew it would end like
that anyway.
is it soft
wind and summer flower
hair
sprouts from that clover and
that one
wraps my ankle, grass,
turns quicker quicker
i am only trying to lay
still.
why did you follow me
here?
only ants and lavender
stalks i cannot see
anyone.
dandelion air presses in
my jacket-sized indent on the
grass. spins
stop i want to yell
no one, you
aren’t here to
stop. right
silly me, i think
i should have remembered that all nice
parks give me
vertigo.

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

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.