bluejays scream: "the

world rounds about
your faces"

your lips—a flightless
moon.

gather flowers
to burn your whitish
corpse—

(flashes of
you, the sand, warmer
waters: floating in the
blue

we sailed on cream
and aster—

where bluejays
toss
air into air;

where frogs
curdle
mud into milk;

where blackberry
roots
skyline into horizon—

(we sailed)

i think trains roll
like tires, at night.

their rubber arms can
hold—

can let go.

you fold
blankets into ribbons of
light

(she folds
stars like spiderwebs

     —
to catch you.

scriptures tear
along her hairline: forehead
creased and painted. i can't
help but think of her
as a deer—as the opening
of the breeze, as the advent
of night, where letters
fold into triangles.

foggy inclines, green saplings
and pines: you always loved
the water.

you long for
elsewhere, but
the currents stirred and

you swept into the fir.

the rains
gather in lines across
your skin.

they wave
like faraway leaves;

they flutter and circle
me; they float out of
reach;

they
brown
in the sodden soil.

unspeakable you:
outlined in charcoal,
shaded in graphite,

the world shifts when
you siphon your
pain.

the world whirs when
you call my name.

upwards open
stringed spirals
spring close to
you.

you purred
with the humming.

i don’t know why
her eyes
why she soars over plains
and mountainsides

almost
to hold me, almost to say
goodbye.

i don’t know why
her eyes
drown in moons,
puddle in the rain;

in my heart so tirelessly
reside.

doves
decay in gutters;
their ghosts dart
across your greedy
eyes.

graves are silent in passing;
stone withers like snow
cracked and weathered: the horizon
pales in shades of blue.

i scattered flowers
in her

hair (they

always
seemed to wane
with the moon

spring pressed
flowers against your body: bluebells
and lilies, yellows and greens.

you remembered the place
where the reeds thickened and
the tall grass swayed with your
heartbeat. you remembered
unravelling the sky, that
withering blue nebula,
sinking into shades of
night

        (your
petals fell into
               the dying        breeze

the morning was threadbare,
loosed on a string.

we watched
the rising sinew; watched
the morning as it knotted and
coiled. the forest
trembled slightly.

she was named after the mountains—
her irises flashed white and howled;
her sleep rumbled with the earthiness
of winter; her mind wandered through
fields of

snow.

i wanted to wander
with her. i wanted to bury my head in the drifts
and sink into her core. i wanted
to stroke her gently:

kiss the
        falling

snow.

everything closes when the sun
goes down, i think.
i remembered you in fuzzy undertones:
the rays always seemed
to languish on your body/
the air always seemed to
sound so sweetly.

i felt the stirrings of  
spring, pressing close, withering
slowly.

burning, fiery red
stones add to the coal

imperfections crouch
in the flames: flickering,
lifeless

consuming, dispassionate red
from dirt to dusk and dawn

rooftop dandelions danced
in the sun as she pressed her body
to the soil.

she said it felt haunting, almost like
a lullaby, she said,
like her grandma’s
attic, she said: so many spiders.
they crawled on
her palms and bared their little fangs.
“haunt me”, she said.

i’ve been trying to
hold the wind; it rushes
past in dying gallops and inhalations
pulling the reigns on my mind up
and over—
rushing in the windows, rustling through
the cricket-fields, towing the clouds
like you
do.

i keep thinking that
maybe you’d just turn around
and hold me

turnings and tire tracks (we
were driving on the morning
sand/

you said you’d hold me
before the dawn).

i sat in a corner,
eyes darting to the
cracks on the ceiling—

then to her: huddled
in solitude, snow falling
around her neck

snow falling inside my mind.

i don’t know why you
told me not to die;when the
quiet settled, i thought i heard
your agony. i asked the
(moon to
hold you/instead of rising
like you do. instead of dying
like you do.

i shattered;
docile, sweeping, the sun rose
in misty greys, greens, and you
looked like unravelled yarn/ i want
to wrap you together, press you close,
knit your branches in the cold.

your glow: so dull,
like keystrokes pounding
to sweep autumn away,
to proliferate
and stain the harvest.
quaking.
       buzzing.
how were you so graceful? i wanted
to touch you, but
you twirled into
sleep.

the laces
undone, trailing.

the nightmares
unfurled, lulling.

falling out like
blowing leaves (upon
the pavement, you leaned
in to kiss me? but the sun rose
and the dreams lifted, veiling
your colours; there’s no point
to going on, you whispered, as we
melted slowly.

i’ve always thought the
sun was cold;
i put on my
jacket and longed for rain.

the mud stained my shoes,
trailing on the carpet; i fell into
the soil.

i think sounds echo
off your lips in the dark;
they drop like needles off
my back.

impermanence was
traced
in flowers;

in clouds below
the highway

the hills thawed;
the night cried on.

you slept in the whiteness
of blank pages,
like snow—
footsteps along the edges.

your breath rose and circled me,
held me, like your wisps of
silken hair—quiet, never finding
a home.

you carried
space and time
in little dots,
like jackals, you thought,
like autumn starlight,
dotting the sky with their
cold, curdled howls.

two centres of
you:

they pulled me like
cats. they pulled me like
carriages.

the roads were
muddy: worn and
muddy.

the sky was grey;
the world was ready to
rain.

pointedly blurring in colours
and tones, you captured your
strokes in brittle clay fragments

we were consanguineal—
we were blood and oil—the

whirl of
your canvas sounded like a thousand
raindrops.

seeds) buried
in the mordant sunshine;
they) told you the sun
would hold you—setting the
soil and the moon.
they) told you the sun
would bury you—cutting the
glassy afternoon.

i saw your note: “the
summation of your tears
infinitely converges”—
then breathlessness as you
paused

—and upon
the water, a heron stirred,
pensive;
the reeds bowed to the northern sky—

“converging, converging”: the mad,
scrawled words, the scribbled midnight
lament; you hid your heart in a pocketbook, pages
folded and layered.

did you feel the reeds yield to
that northern horizon? did you feel that pensive,
infinite heron? she stirred, scattering your
words in the early summer breeze.

headway upon
the waters—scratching
like mice, their ears, furred
and wrapped into the overcoat

they dropped: your river was like a
cage.

ii.

the nighttime
nods and mourns to
the sounds of your breathing—
like a beacon of the sea, she feels
the pull of the moon, feels the
rising shadows of disunion

that mass of air, thicker
than the crust of the earth and
the layers of the ether;
you couldn’t remember how to smile or
laugh or cry—

you just sighed
at her.

i.

lights drifted
over you

and i—

darkened
your silhouette

       shadow
danced on the walls
pressed against the
slumber,gently rocking

my—

over you.

your indignant snow seemed
so wasteful,
so condemned:
i remembered
your halo calming me as
the stage lights trembled;
i remembered your unabashed
stillness, the defenceless apathy of
corpses—

you lay wan,
abject, an object of
blank disposability,
howling in the roundness
of dust.

aspirations beget
lucid, sea-struck moonlight;
emanate your kind regret—
soar with the painted moonflight.

the metal is poised:
upright, red, defiant.

the glow is muted,
inhuman    /.
       the garden
is tired; it asks for
forgiveness.

the metal is poised:
the leaves disperse—
frightened./
       the valleys crawl into the sky.

the metal is poised:
you’re/     like a dusty,
aeroplane
window: i see home falling
away
       away
              away)

yesterday, she
woke to the waving of
the grass

—bitter, golden,
lovable—

and she swept
the ridges and crests with
sunsets and understanding

like a feeling
of waving, waving
away.

stellar masses collide
beyond you; they silhouette
your ethos, slip loose your
hair—
they pattern your fingertips
and colour your
sigh

their flame:
a colossus
in your eyes.

her everything
curled into the evening—
the flame ebbed
and darkened.

if i closed
you—

if the air fell
backwards, darkly—

if yours
brooked with golden
sunrise

softened (i love

when you
    dance.

her
tulips bloomed in the night,
       softer
than the paling
moon/       beams

darker silhouettes
—hers—lined the u’s
and i’s of turning. the headlights
skimmed the road, petalled
like ice.

your bones soak in
the subtlety of
falling/

or

your cold, faraway
freedom, your pursed,
sunrise lips/

and

that terraced, sloping worry,
buried in your arms/

more like

your whitish and
weathered rain.

driving over these
blue lines is like bridges
without arched triangles—

your arched and aching triangles.

carrying the white-flecked wisps
of you hurt like tomorrow. sometimes they
whispered, when the sun quieted:
“you’re like frost—
you melt into the dark”.

sweetly swimming
in the colder tides of
emptiness—
tidier than the backseat and
your umbrellas; tidier
than the rolling crests of
suburbia;
tidied by the frayed smoothness
of sea.