drywall graveyards
tacks stabbed through ghosts
buried and legible and moss-bearing

you never leave flowers
but you still remember; will
even with creasing palms of
papercuts and old printer ink

in a lot of ways you're still sliding across main street
graphite-stained and bleary
surrounded by cymbals
and freezing condensation
and pinpricks in your fingers

in a lot of ways you're still feeding her clementines,
her veins bic-blue and eyes alight
near clear with
spirits realer than you

in every way you're crumpled and jagged on the floor
the swaying kitchen table

you're talking to a fragment,
a figment handing you bottles to
burn your tongue and your throat and wait
for what?

for your self-portrait to dry once and for all;
for footsteps echoing down the stairs;
for long-decayed maple helicopters to activate;

for the dears to fall behind your bed and stay there