“Have you heard the bells yet?” He asked, languid, dispassionate.
“Not yet,” I replied.
“You’ll hear them at night and you will rise as if to answer but there is no call, the bells are in your head. Strange isn’t it? How this place follows you around like a lonely ghost haunting the only house on the block.”
“People aren’t houses,” I said.
“Aren’t they home to something?”

A room is just a room
a box is just a box
eight by ten nothing-
but Confinement for Life is what they meant
by the bars.
The box is a room is a tent where I pretend screeching in the night is just animals at play,
and beyond my thin flap door is the wilderness in all its glorious green array.

A silver van passes every day with boys wearing
the thousand mile stare
and one boy wears a red sweater,
rocks forward
rocks back
like a maroon buoy in tempest waves
tossed by turbulet wind
he stares forward, lost in a storm unseen.

She moves with grace
grace moves with her
if she'd dance
sing
would it be her you'd hear
She's hiding something
green
old
crumpled
in her hand
trembling
rage inside
Don't fix
what is not broken,
or in your words,
"God has spoken."

Today from the atrium the oleanders crept.
It has been coming, I have foreseen it
in the dark where soil is kept,
in spider cracking windows
and the pale greenery's lost steps.
though I had once thought the escape
to be inept.

I used to worry their fragile buds, when
seeking freedom from prism light,
would not survive the harsh transition
would not survive the come-on night.
Now I see the morning to come
after the midnight run would be
the first light born, negative the shield,
through which the oleanders used
to see:
the dawn,

the triumph,

oh the sight,
The harmony of the dew
with daylight's furious might
and the sun breaking the way - it makes
the gloom so bright

while I, in my room with my pill candy and my
sheets: the white is just too white and the
walls are Mary clean.
I watch them from my window and I hunger at the sight.
I envy them their beauty, their strength,
and their flight.

I am Mira
my changing brightness
lasted for months as my
beginning pulses
lengthen and widen
bursts of energy
never stay
always hiding
binary stars too close
colliding
My brightness
Mira
lasted for centuries.

As tears break through lines in your face
as your hands open limply
palms beseeching stars
Sister,
I don’t know the lyrics of your sorrow
but I have run to catch up with you
so that I can join our cold hands
and grasp the sun between our palms
so we can run together.
Sister,
you run ahead and see the end of the line
(please share it with me)
in broken sobs
you beg me not to look
where true darkness is kept
like secrets from the young,
and yet, you turn your face
back to the sun
Sister.