I can not shake the almost-memory
of your warring skin, or the depth
of that moment in meaning,
never the slow silence bleeding
out of you in waves, your pulse,
your years falling out like baby
teeth, and the inside of you in grey,
clipped and dim lit dreams dashed
into shards.

Your all-too-silent night.
I think of you and I think of you,
in different lights, bathed in other colors,
all your faces, your expressions melting
into one another. I've found every you.
I've kept them here, together, like a roll
of film, and sometimes, when I'm sad,
I pull them out and look for my face too.

The moon says, It will save you
so much pain if you let me take your
wisdom teeth now. Lovely moon,
silky-voice moon, moon like chalk,
so soft and crumbly on your hands,
hands that rake through my hair like
a yard of fallen leaves.

Remember, darling?
I do. A night like the sweetest peaches,
and in the morning, only left with the
pits, counting the mistakes, measuring
the loss like scientists study black holes.
I won big. I scratched your name out of
a lottery ticket and told everyone but you
how lucky I was.

Heart of hearts, dark of darks, heart of darks,
how it all flows, the music changing the words,
making them understand each other, connecting
them like we connect them in language. The
music has its own language. We call it poetry.
We call it song. Sometimes I recognize it when
she speaks. Sometimes words leave us, but
the music is still there.