in june I felt the project change
from trying charting all scenarios of your face
to looking to books to blacking out spontaneous lines in found papers
to clearly eventually
be a misneglected omen of your impending collapse.

"I would like to blame this on the weather,"
I said to the sky,
"I would like to stay."


I felt the camera flash stop taking
strobe light moments of our strobe light moments
instead slipped tape recorder in your cereal box
videotaped the tooth brush
ever scraping dead skin while you slept.

I said, "If you wake up I will know nothing."
if you call this a dream, I will shake
and shake.
I said "it is clear now that you are decomposing."
(there's only so much the heart can take.)


stopped thoughts about the bus would hit you
spent time watching the sun through your palm:
little bones will scatter light.
little scars on thumbs.
we are made up only of who puts us back together.
and I could smell the rain.

I said, "It is easier if you stay angry"
I said to the sky.
"I would like to stay."


I put the Starbucks mug on the radiator
ceased to chart your worried looks.
I knew your brow, heavy clouds as you'd undress
but made a scrapbook of frozen dinner clippings
drew a line through where you went that day.

I said, "I want to prove that you meant nothing"
I said to the sky.
"I would like to stay."
I said to the sky.


and then the rain.