clearing my throat just to scream
doesn't seem like a great idea
but most of my ideas aren't that great
anyway:
i was just thinking about the time
i was just thinking about the time
i was just thinking

about suffocating on oxygen and living forever and eating spaghetti and talking to siri and learning how to ice skate and peeing in the backyard and running around barefoot and camping with strangers and listening to music and trying new things and driving on the highway and jumping from the driving board and playing hide and seek at night and talking to new people and licking the spoon and floating on the top of the world

and floating on top of the world

The dust to dust phase
in between, you
did't want a self-destruction
to resurrect a dying myth.

Only God knows. Why
there was only the body language
to explain the miracle.

You wake up a frog
from hibernation. There was
no drought. Plenty of rains.
No nightmares. One has to change
the climate shift.

A muted denial stays
in throat. You wanted to say
the whole truth about life,
which never was uttered.

Scoliosis tilts the water
balance. You cannot carry the
vessels on head. Doubts
would play on the script.

Author had promised to live again.

the accidental possessions
of a disillusioned
proofreader
include:

/ the asemic
pawprints
of something
swallowed
by an invisible
hypochondriac

/ paper plate
the shadow’s
last
brainstorm

/ puberty
the broth
of wound / & this

the hair that pulled me through

D A Y L I G H T:
⠀
In my premature years, black licorice had always been my favorite treat, as it evoked memories of my favorite bird: the crow. It was something like a token of my admiration. Laid in a brittle bed of crisp-like-fall leaves, eyes that were once much bigger would gaze at the sky and see it as a continuation of the ocean. I assumed there was more distance, more leaves, more crows; because the ocean was never just the boats that wavered on the surface.
⠀
I never apprehended that throughout the day is when crows are most distinguishable. Their ebony cutouts, nefarious eyes, and visibly oily obsidian tones contrasted greatly against my favorite element of day – they rode through clouds like mere puddles of fog. Their squawking did not reverberate as boundlessly, nor did it ricochet against the buildings and quivering pine trees. The morning time is when the crows divulge in their breakfast meal, sipping dew from the tallest blades of grass while dressed all in black. It is never the question of, “did you hear that?” or “what was it?”. The crow is the crow as the pigeon is the pigeon.
⠀
⠀
N I G H T F A L L:
⠀
When the world is cloaked with its darkest twinges of night is when the crows become the /crows/, disappearing into their forest lairs. There, they resemble storm clouds that crackle with an aloof thunder regardless of hovering just overhead like a guilty conscience. At night, their hell reigns on a foreshadowed sanctuary – a repetitive funeral, Satan himself occupying a casket made from twigs, the flesh of mice, and children’s shoelaces. Your mind morphs into an unhinged vault, where they prowl and feed on your visions, and devour your common sense. They dilute your integrity with ingenuity.  The crow is no longer something vexatious, but rather you are - an intruder - and he, above you in every sense of the word.
⠀
I lie here now, patient as the sun’s shift ends and a somber veil falls over relative land. I no longer face the obligation of licorice, and instead between my teeth resides the root of a sleek, onyx feather. “Sono vivo gui.”

It was the silver, heart-enveloping view
Of the mysterious sea-line far away,
Seen only on a gleaming gold-white day,
That made it dear and beautiful to you.

And Laura loved it for the little hill,
Where the quartz sparkled fire, barren and dun,
Whence in the shadow of the dying sun,
She contemplated Hallow's wooden mill.

While Danny liked the sheltering high grass,
In which he lay upon a clear dry night,
To hear and see, screened skilfully from sight,
The happy lovers of the valley pass.

But oh! I loved it for the big round moon
That swung out of the clouds and swooned aloft,
Burning with passion, gloriously soft,
Lighting the purple flowers of fragrant June.

I don't know what he was to others—
   fireworks, lemonade, ants crawling on a picnic blanket—
   but I always knew him at his worst.
He was sleep cycles shaped like carnival pretzels,
   days that bled together,
weeks that clumped like a rat king
   under floorboards in the beach house.
He spoke in clouds
   swollen with diluvian rain,
daggers of lightning
   cracking the river in half,
the language of a muggy body in sticky room
   staring out a window
at absolutely nothing.
   The sort of stuff that makes me think
he didn't know his own strength,
   most of the time.

As always, when he died this year
   he died by degrees,
bedridden in the hospice of September.
   I listened to his death rattle
 of rustling yellow leaves
   and watched the last of the fireflies
crawl from between his parted lips.
   When he went cold for good
I built a pyre out of his firewood bones.
   The ashes fell into the soil
like seeds in waiting, and I watched
   the moon grow so large that it stretched
the nighttime like candy licorice
   and made it longer than before.
My duty done, I turned to go.
   The smoke rose up to embrace the sky,
and at the time, I could have sworn
  that from the corner of my eye
I saw it curl around
   and wave at me.