You found me staring, hair full of sand:
I had tried to embrace the water as my blood
and was reprimanded by a wave for my daring.
Around us the thick grass like palm-sunday fronds
and the path of boards lifted from a painting
dissolved into steel wool. The rest of the scene
has been redacted, smeared from my mind
with an inky thumb.
You found me between sleep. I am still
waiting to be returned to , or
wherever the quarter-light carved your back
into soft photograin beneath my childs hands.
You said, "
", words warming me
with the bloom of a chrysanthemum beneath my chest.
Does the crown of petals still ***** like the cigarettes
off that balcony, overlooking ?
I burned my body into your imagined contours.
The space between ours folded over and
again, an origami figure slowly taking on mass and attitude.
It sat on my shoulder, Incan headdress grown solid one day,
stock right foot the next. It cleaved and cleaved.
We joined at or maybe , in the rain.
Or was it? My face was wet, and hands or moths
fluttered against an aquarium window.
If dreaming, I awoke when : the train
flattened its memory like a penny.
Here it is, squashed between my fingers. The face pushed
like putty, smoothed like the faces of and
and of course , who remains
only as a scratchy, juvenile voice.