Bent-backed, except when you remember that you're not.
Musty like a neglected closet, just this side of
sour milk.  The tang of rusted wire
guitar strings.  A blank canvas.  Baby shampoo,
no tears.  But you smell like those too.

Ash and gray, hair the middle of light to dark, you
straddle the dusky twilight, a color meant for no one.
Open to the world, every emotion passing through your eyes,
golden clear, a citrus shock trespass into my head, until
your doors close, eyes like mud.
Lemon Meringue.

A never-ending travel show
Of stories, dark in trees,
Scroll past me over and again
And the space in the car is
Something I would rather not

[It's all in your head, and there's always one story you can't write]

Think about the lake an the lighthouse,
We'll drink until we can't see them
Anymore, and our smoke has
Covered the stars, and the moon.

[...spent some time in a Soviet prison camp, but now I've forgotten the important bits that mattered more, she was a dentist you know...]

Tell me the story again of that time
You got so drunk that

[Let me tell you the story of the diamond earrings she got from her mother, who got them from her mother before her...]

You couldn't even walk, but it was so funny
That we all forgave you, and besides,

[She married twice before the war, and once again after it, because after all her husband was in politics when Russia invaded, unlucky for him.]

We like to talk big but really
It's not even that late when we
Begin to drop, one by one.
When the lights are out I can finally see you, clearly

[She lived in prison and in poverty with diamonds in her pocket.]

When all else is gone, and it doesn't
Make any sense, but you're there next to me
Clear as day, and I can't seem to remember
My own story in this night room.

[There once was a lady, she was my great-grandmother actually, well she...]

Movement does not exist here
A world of grey and rain and soft(ly falling dreams)
We exist here
Like a vine
Your heart and mine

“repeat that, repeat,”
fidget, wait, an anxious still face, deep-eyes, unbelievably
now,
with a breath, another breath, I’m unbounding
my edges stretching and expanding from the fence that kept me, always
always – all ways – you:
the whole world is aflame at a glimpse at a sight of your backturned face.