angelica fits, weaves through
my fingertips,
out my mouth sprouts
morning glories
and wormwood blooms across
my eyelashes. i’ve lost
something i never had;
nevertheless
i feel the lack in
the spaces in my chest.

perhaps some space is left
yet uncultivated,
yet unpopulated by meadowsweet or
marigold --
perhaps i could unfold
the silk-soft petals of
a crocus,
let the columbine alone
and let the moss rose grow.

dig up my bones and
tell me they’re beautiful,
while you dust the dirt off
your tough-man hands
and tilt your eyes like skies
to the undone grave.
tell me they’re as
flowers, sprung silvery-petaled
from the earth, beautiful;

and i’ll tell you
you’re as the earth --
all.

tell me, how fast
can your jetplane fly,
because i am drowning
and i don’t know where
or why

and lungs in a chest
cannot go more than
three minutes
without air

that airplane flies past
what a great metal beast;
but how small it looks
when set on a background
of the sky lit
lightning-bright

twelve hundred thousand ways i
could count the days we spent
side by side on my
sunlit bed,

but it would never
could never
express,
there are no words for
the wings in your eyes; and
the way breathing you in sends
ripples through my skin
and it feels like the arrival of
the birds

and that hospital stench
in my nostrils is acute and sharp
in my senses and mostly in
my heart -- it sears the memory of "goobye" 
"no, hello"
back into the front of my skull
across the backs of my eyes 

and i feel it, too in 
my chest/lungs/heart/stomach
i can’t tell, i’m much
too busy
bleeding