If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn’t a lie,
Life would be delight,—
But things couldn’t go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn’t be I.

If earth was heaven and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I’d be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn’t be you.

If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee
Things would seem fair,—
Yet they’d all despair,
For if here was there
We wouldn’t be we.

The leaves are falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no".

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

Rainer Maria Rilke

I live in a house
with wafer walls
paper thin
crispy, crumbling
when scraped, snowflakes.

I live in a house
with wafer walls,
sounds seeping
in the crisscross lattice,
in the holes
of the foam.

I live in a house
with wafer walls,
porous, absorbent of tears
and angry words,
melting feelings
in the middle.

I told God,
"Write a poem please."
he looked down,
pointed at me.
"I already did."

How you do it:
Lock your arms around her,
and rest her head on your chest.
Enclosed in that embrace
she hears her heart race. (Or is it yours?)
And brace herself for the unknown.

You turn words into melted ice,
cold, searing the skin.
Even her name sounds foreign in your mouth.
A term of endearment
for a lover, on a retrouvailles.

How you did it:
Built a prison
in the rubble of memories.