you apologized with art

you, filling the room of your mouth with earth
carefully. you brush the dirt into the center of each
flawed little room, humming. there’s a light in
the front yard across the street where i cast
my long-over moody shadow
about the couch, backwards:
where she and i slept in our soft vapor
and when it was across the room
where you placed me as if i were a piece on a table
like “all part of the game” that i forgot to think of
as you slept beside me, sorry or not sorry
i say you’ve grown taller
as if sowing eight drops of blood
had stirred something within your spine,
undamaged and still young
cracking in your sleep
my jaw told her i dream of some long lost bird
and she understood,
there in the humming clarity of that first-floor room
where we’d never been
as if this could all be about me
and the condition of light on that first morning:
the music which i did not hear
the room that i never saw
(but wept at all the same)
the things you hide from me, even now
each photograph is too big for truth
and how surprised i find myself at being finished.