sometimes this is
a barn loft filled with crumpled mad owls
like you punching the side of my car-
when your eyes became more rock,
less ice and i sobbed next to
a woman in a lexus watching me wheeze ash and spit
into my wet hands shaped like
the kuiper belt, the bodies within them
(yours the hardest, the most blue)
the condition of the sheets around six in the evening
there are ways of living
milky, the way i am
not currently living
do i confess that as i sleep alone my spine curls with want
to be other, to be nix, hydra, charon?
the black vulture circling your thighs
the water-drinker crouching
at the crater’s languid salt pool
alternately feeling the desperation of
american canyon road, zip 94503
and the thick clarity of
a non-smoking room in
the southern realm of “here”
this was a case study,
bending under you to observe:
your mouth filled with hot water and spilled out onto your naked chest
as parts of myself went missing
the water ran down into my throat
this isn’t moon linen, it’s polyester
your face television blue, your slick hair
your eyes sitting in your pretty head,
hurtling chunks of ice and rock
stealing me into torpor
we stand on a ledge and look up
the nearest planet is clear
we think of invisible things
not knowing that sometimes we ourselves disappear
like mice under the hotel floorboards
and like the highway, all covered in white.