i stopped writing about love and all the people
that begged for rations of my lips and eyes
i've left the pages white and neat and empty
i've kept the plastic wrap around my mind.

i stopped trying to feel something worth describing
with rhythm and with simile and rhyme.
i am collected in this box of bones and sutures
i am impossible to love past dinner time.

i stopped shaking from my heavy, dreamless sleeping,
the timing belt to which my feet are strapped.
i am locked into a ground that can't broken,
guarding mines of love like gold that can't be tapped.

i stopped writing about depth and loss and body
i packed and froze my stock of butterflies
i've kept in cages all the wild phrases
that once wandered like balloons into the skies.

i stopped turning all the pages of the scripture
i pray only after two glasses of wine
i dug until i found the clay of chaos
then stabbed my shovel dully in its spine.

i stopped writing about love and all it's meanings
i am suspended on a rope above my heart
cracking slowly under weight of empty spaces
why fall in love when you can fall apart?