"I write poetry,"  you laugh,  "I can tell beautiful lies..."

Sadly clever, your decoys reaching out to the dendrites of trees
desolated by winter, fingertips in their severe shapes stroking

lungs turned inside out so that they might breathe for you
when the patterns of things become as unwoven as they seem

and a dark symmetry throws smoke across the mirrors. All the
mirrors are rippling, frail as moonlight on the ruptured skein

of whatever is left of the water and then only the good doctor
as you turn to undress before the open door, waits.

You whisper: "I will tell lies you will want to believe."