As she twirls the rope of hair
in her nail tip, she’s not delicate.
It's round in shape, like the way
her missing brow furrows
: a charging shade of brown.
Dark, weighted, barring.

“Ms. Rita! Ms. Rita!”

She scares me still.
I sit down beside her and watch a twitch.
Something in the corner of her mouth.
Her lips: romp and pink.
As she moves them slowly,
girthed gape in the wake of a reprise;
she doesn't chirp or grin out loud,

She smacks!
She doesn't look happy.
She never does.
She calls my name.

So:

I tuck my skull between my knees
and burst brown the deep auburn.
As her eyes fix training on me.
She calls me to the front.

On the board.
White and then green.
Powder, powder.
She lends me the stage,
to which I bear only fright.
So I shrink.
I shrink.

this... mourning!
what a complicated gift to bear, Father.
how is it a treasure to hold, if not a treachery of the heart (my own) bare and unashamed of its overflow?

i think to myself desperately, at a perpetual fault: it will never be enough. Oughtn't i to be mangled up and down by spurs of marigold scented linens and funeral roses, to wither and meet you in heaven?

in your stead, every night my head swells and my mouth falls open. if this is a prayer i let go, then make it a cool balm to my fevered soul -- heart alive.

if my Lord's own head bows toward the earth, then the blood flowing through my veins too is yours to claim for however long this hurt is immaterial. i miss you the most, just tell me how many years.

Call it the firmament:
a litany of freckle-like scars
crossing the shoulder blades where you stood.
Gracious.

Unfurling in spite
of your hadean highness.
You call it fickle
Whilst I long for re-aligning the stars.

A sweet sprawl hidden
behind a feign of shyness.
The places your mouth goes,
When you smile - that is.
That place, a sacred one, where your lips curl to meet mine.

I caution your step
and count the pace heading the storm
And your all fills the room
and the air rumples and caves,
accosting a meadow.
I breathe you in.
And your all covers mine.

And you joust, standing.
And your bony hair and your bouncing smile
Take me back
Bathe me in your running wells for another while.

Filibustered, hanged by a quick quip of the head,
I write this afoot an altar made (your own)
I scab my finger until the tip bleeds down the nail bed.
I plucker the wheat you’ve sown: a soiled painting where the wall is blue.

When I do it, not a thought  is to prevail,
You? You peddle and you complain, sick *******.
Your crosses cover my light. Vexed, I too wail.

Then I run, run, and run no time, no rest to find.
You mean it when you say it, you do. I’d screech!
And quip, quip, quip. A quick prayer sails out your hind.

Whilst I wrote not slacking once dreading the end of you,
The weight of your stare lingered.
To me: a blight disguised in brown behind dead eyes I made my own.
You are alone.

In this hate you give, my God.
I’d worship with haste
but no valour nor truth.