He’s dead, the *******
Last I saw him up the Bombax tree
Stealing wool out the clouds
Rolling it into ***** and
hanging them by the boughs

I cracked its hollow bones
He helped cut the rest—
Together, I tied them firm
And covered with leaves
covered with dreams
with paints

Houses, and red bushes,
and green birds I made
All, beneath them bruised skies, I placed
I gifted them all to him,
He hung them by the cotton *****
— by the fiery blooms
of that flushed tree
We carved songs out the dirt
Carved for the withered,
and the birds

He’s dead, the *******—
Chopped down the Bombax tree
and buried our flowers
— buried them breathing
My paintings, he nailed to the sky
Pieces of clouds lie bare in the mud
Where he planted a poem
and spilled his soul to
water the seed
that would never sprout

For the dead, we wrote,
—for the winged
They at my colours laugh
and I listen, and I listen, and I laugh
A dreamer that he was,
a dreamer he made of me
He lives there now, the traitor—
plucked the sleep out my nights
One by two by three by ten

Bombax tree, we joked, ******
red out the stilled
now we do not joke, now we’re still—
Red flowers stilled—
He’s dead, the *******
Chopped down our home
Left me with those empty boards
Red, his very own paint
Blue, stollen from the dawn

A thief that he was
a thief he made of me—
I, too, borrow yellow out the daisies
and trick these frogs into spitting green
But what do I paint?
He’s deaf, the *******.
Dumb, even—
What do I paint, huh?
The whole **** world’s
a painting gone wrong
What do I birth out these tired hues?
Last I did, he sold them to the wind
The *******—
beautiful, dead *******
Traitor—