Difficult for unpracticed hands
Valuing it, protecting it, nurturing it.
It should have been all that she needed to carry
She felt sure it was there,
In the dark place
Beneath the joy,
Between this breath
And the next laugh.

I see some echo of it there still.
It shows itself in the negative spaces
And desperately needs the light and air.
She thinks it small and cheap, and well-covered
Beneath the bite of a vinegar voice
In the folds of a silken smile
Muffled by the thick wool of persona.
  
She keeps her arms folded
Her irises blank.
Idly pulling loosened threads,
And tunes the prototype.

Sometimes there is the terror
Of cutting isolation
Of an icy apartness  
In a dense and moving crowd
Of friends and cohorts.

Once she tried to let it free.
Arms spread wide in the street.
Ready to give that gift to herself
From deep within the erected façade
Amid the mass of anonymous humanity,
Amid the ******* legs and cab-hailing arms.

Later, a mirror brings a cold draft
Chilled by the empty spaces.
And then a fear,
Not knowing where it was anymore.
Hidden too deeply?
Lost along the path?

Maybe it was never given to her at all.

The night now.
Always the night.
Seemingly unreachable through a thick, leaden afternoon
But finally edges fade and muddle in unison,
Into a place that erases all acuity.
It moves across the city
On a sticky pudding of humidity
Daring the streetlights into action.

Oh, the night
Of asphalt and chrome.
Of oily skin and enfrizzened hair.
Of shouts and whoops and horns.
When even distant sirens
Sing the lament:

The night.
Always the night.

A hammer upon the landscape.
Thunder like a toppling mountain.

Flashes like x-ray explosions.
Supernova surprise.

Sheets of rain.
Glistening-rebar javelins
Pierce the asphalt
Shatter the concrete.

Long shards of glass
From the grey
Steel-wool clouds.

I haven't written a poem on that website yet today
No words have come along for me to digitally say.
If I can't find a phrase or two for all those folks to see
This sunny day will turn to night with nothing new from me.

Surely I can find some words to mark this day that's ending
Even if not notable and unlikely to start trending
There's nothing here that with your beer you'll raise up in a toast
But if I'm not mistaken now, I've something I can post.

I will lay on the short grass
Nobody will see me
Vanilla-cream-pink against a thousand shades of green.
Insects encounter the mountain,
Such little things but with a power
To shrink large woes with their meanderings.

I will let the grass grow around me.
Tendrils writhe beneath my back
To search and plead for sun.
But turn white, bleached of chlorophyll.
Immovable and arbitrary, I am the barrier.
We share a common bond as his victim.

Others numerous soon rest their heads upon the soil,
Their hair grows down into the ground,
Weaving loops around roots and between stones,
And into cracks in the bedrock
******* at the moisture there
Until the trees, the grass and I
Turn brown, brittle and dry.

First words carved from stone.
Chips fly and sting when they bite
Cheeks and forehead and forearms,
Tiny welts, hard to see, but they're still there.

Later words moulded from grey, colourless clay.
Too wet and hesitant and sticky to hold a form.
They want to slump again into an unformed mass
Like the one from whence they came.

Words scraped now in hard-packed, ****-bound soil,
Each requires pulling and tearing to take the slightest form.
A rain comes before the phrases could all be scraped together,
The concrete-like surface quickly softening into mud
Soon it's as if they were never said at all.

He insisted we go down
To a place near the river
He was briefly obsessed with the boats
And explained he didn't have anywhere to stay that night.

All these constant changes of subject,
And weird self-obsessions,
Then he calls ME half crazy,
As if that would make his company pleasant.

Why does he keep checking the origin
Of my tea
And of my oranges.
He's a loveless, non-committal fool.
Just when you think
He understands what you're saying,
He says something stupid.
And I don't say anything,
Just let the river do the talking.
He's delusional about our relationship.

And he wants to come on vacation with me
And he doesn't seem to care to where,
And he thinks somehow I'd trust him,
And he makes lascivious comments about my body.  

Jesus, how did sailing come into this?
Is he some evangelical nut?
Oh man, he is going on about this.
Sailing, and garbage and flowers and seaweed.
He clearly cannot maintain a train of thought.

I look at my watch,
I take out my mirror,
I practice my 'yeah, sure, I'm interested face.'

And again he's off again about coming on my vacation,
And again he doesn't care where to,
And again he thinks himself trustworthy
And again, with the unwelcomed comments about my body.