little sister do you remember all those nights
I sat on the edge        softly folding my love            
your small body warm but heavy
my attempts at safety as I spun
apologies into lullabies
and read stories of ethereal landscapes
with orphaned children lost

I almost had you believing
we would be so much more
than our childhoods suggested
and in kings who ruled true
and queens who stayed brave

little sister can you imagine I am sorry
for all the nights I walked by your door
without stopping,  my footsteps echoing
the sacrifice I did not make
leaving you wanting
stories where nobody         needs to be saved

if i could snap my fingers
and have you back in my arms
i wouldn't move a muscle
because you cracked my heart in half
and i still haven't recovered
you will never know
because it hasn't happened to you
and i hope it never happens
because putting the pieces
of your heart back together
is harder than any jigsaw puzzle
in the entire universe

Love, the world
Suddenly turns, turns color. The streetlight
Splits through the rat's tail
Pods of the laburnum at nine in the morning.
It is the Arctic,

This little black
Circle, with its tawn silk grasses - babies hair.
There is a green in the air,
Soft, delectable.
It cushions me lovingly.

I am flushed and warm.
I think I may be enormous,
I am so stupidly happy,
My Wellingtons
Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.

This is my property.
Two times a day
I pace it, sniffing
The barbarous holly with its viridian
Scallops, pure iron,

And the wall of the odd corpses.
I love them.
I love them like history.
The apples are golden,
Imagine it ----

My seventy trees
Holding their gold-ruddy *****
In a thick gray death-soup,
Their million
Gold leaves metal and breathless.

O love, O celibate.
Nobody but me
Walks the waist high wet.
The irreplaceable
Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae.

I’d like to say that I have moved on
and maybe I have
but forgetting you looks a lot like
the time you sent me home before running to catch the last bus;
I just kept looking back at you,
and right now,
I still am.