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.

seldom do i recall the vastness of the open—
your cold invitingly holds me to the unspoken;
beckons at me through that sylvan oaken
world beyond worlds, rising within me, bespoken
of that grandeur through the sky—floating
just beyond the edges of our emotion.

and it's a cold evening,
the writings swirling on the wandering pavement—
your silhouette hangs on the tail of the lowering sun,
and gleams, a pale reflection, in the water below;
and crescendos of the waxing moonlight seem more like the
hushed whispers of starlight, like the
hushed silence of forest's night, like the
hushed breathing of your heart's bright, like the
hushed rolling and descent of all that might,
of all that stirs the spirit, and all that bespeaks the pensive, slumbering
winter infinite.

time pressed on my heart like
the whiteness of your tile

;

she was in your arms
my

features
fade

without

tears fall in wells of the irreplaceable
—their dying, solid currents
forgotten as i brush your sleeve.

it will outlast me:

this weathered floorboard, those lofty chandeliers...

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

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

interred into islands
i ached for your
icicles

and rained.

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

still, the loss sustains these gaping mouths,
we tire, while you remind me
of the tastes of freedom,
of the colours of lodgepole pines rooted in dry,
eastern soil: bitter
and clear.

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.

reflective in
reflections: sad,
you said, greens and blues,
sad, you wondered,
like a ribbon

i felt you too—
pale greens,
fading blues)

just your gaze,
just rising starlight
across your rivers;

just fields of wonder
buried in those eyes.

impermanence was
traced
in flowers;

in clouds below
the highway

the hills thawed;
the night cried on.

I am no landscape, my
droning, drowning
dearest.

I am no sanctity to your
touch, no sea to strangle your
pleading, endless eyes.

I am stone to grass,
I am inscribed,
I am memoriam.

i know why you don't look at me

knowing i could've
   looked at you.

your screaming aura,

your ethos:

you're woven into
bedstands and nightstands;

looming sideways,
your head disappears into

a maze of tangled lines.

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.

The metal splinters and bends:

i'm split into moon-shadow
and star-shadow.

i'm ripped apart.
i'm outshined.
i'm sorry.

upwards open
stringed spirals
spring close to
you.

you purred
with the humming.

encoded in
the warmer corners
of pocketed, petalled fields,
blossoms push through earth and mud,
whirl through air and clouds and sky

like you, they
bloomed with the stars and

like you, they
withered with the snow.

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.

the way you loop,
the way you close your eyes to
look at me,

i feel you,
voices down the line

(something has to
give.

burning, fiery red
stones add to the coal

imperfections crouch
in the flames: flickering,
lifeless

consuming, dispassionate red
from dirt to dusk and dawn

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.

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.

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.

curl, wind:
or wind over me—
but closing and hinging
on this bluer softness,
over the wending,
wooden handles:
curl, wind.

I've known melting snow like droplets of spruce:

musing greens, feather-whites,

spaces among words,

ink dripping from earth to ether.

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.

frightened, like colder
clouding sunlight,

like windows
of shadow and blue,

colder
shadowing sunlight,

like widows
of frightened blue

i pasted your love to the window:

blue, clouding sunlight.

i'm burning whatever's left of us:

i'm burning
these foundations

i'm forgetting you

i'm walling myself
in flame

i'm watching you walk
away

the doorway collapses
around me before i
realise it's too
late.

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).

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.

your white dress
trailed along the high highway
brushing leather and sage

i knew why you were driving
away:

the consecrated hordes and
suitcases in your closet closed
on their broken hinges:

i never felt so askew,
such a part of you.

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.

you drive as an
ageless curse;
sparrow feather
to your chest,
you wait
to take flight.

i.

lights drifted
over you

and i—

darkened
your silhouette

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

my—

over you.

she writes me a requiem
for our encounters, waving
like a flag outside in the yard.

i find her photographs and boots in
odd, less-frequented corners:

we'll never
decipher the scrawled handwriting.

then i see you: breath
catches in my throat.

i feel my soul
resounding upon you: sounds
of you, always. do i fool you with my
smile?

i know what i cannot
say: what i can never truly,
truly say:

i miss you i
miss you i miss
you i
miss you i

your reply opens,
pale,

mine to darken.

but screenlight's not quite like starlight;

it's not enough to hold onto.
not enough to never let go.

from behind the
rising lights, your hands
dancing like little wind.

i couldn't look away
as you sang
and they sang

i knew what was most beautiful

—the lights passed in
a moment of you.

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.

you circled the wrong
answer again
and again, the
led darkening into the paper
until there were no answers
left at all.

i'm more than you
could ever tear apart;

my colours blend like
clouds, soaking through
paper.

unspeakable you:
outlined in charcoal,
shaded in graphite,

the world shifts when
you siphon your
pain.

the world whirs when
you call my name.