You stand in the mirror and the light shines
From in front of you;
You've become more of a silhouette
Than a person.
You run your fingers through your hair
As you press strands between
Hot metal
And heart between
Teeth.

Your grandmother called you
Mara Bird
And I think the name is fitting:
Curls dance across your shoulders
And down your back
Like birds flitting across water's surface;
The hum that finds its way
From the atrium of your mouth
And into the space around us
Resembles those of songbirds
Whose tunes are audible
Only to those who are really listening.
(And I want to tell you that
I am really listening).

Sometimes I peel oranges
So the remnants will
Hide beneath the
Half-moon of my fingernails,
And I will smell of citrus
For the day.
My friends used to call me orange peel,
Do you remember that?
Your hands are sweet like mine, too,
When they are veiled in confidence
And nimble like the legs of a
Ballerina.
I did ballet as a child,
I can show you a pirouette
Or an arabesque,
And my fingers can play Arabesque
On the piano, too.
Sixteenth note runs
Remind me of children in the moonlight
Chasing fireflies and
Running in the grass.
You call to me,
I think we should join them—
I think we should join them,
You call.

the glow-in-the-dark stars on my wall
are brighter than
my ambitions,
vicodin washes down with
stone cold fear,
and mercury is in retrograde-
not that we felt the need to communicate.
tiny planets on a string,
we danced in the
orbit that we shared.
you had misgivings,
told me pluto
never made it around the sun,
not even once.
but earth created a moon
with her soulmate.
mercury doesn't return direct
until february 11th;
by then
paracetamol and hydrocodone
will have passed.
opiates and human beings
both sources of anxiety
but i don't mind
drowning in them both.