I’ve foreseen this moment for so long:
Always on some other plane, in some other grain
Of sand—in the far-off of time
Some future, a world away, too indistinct to decipher
the blurred edges into a clear line.

I’ve had nothing but hot electric tears
to warm my bed this year,
but they’ve long since gone cold.
See? the birds know.
Outside my window, they sing in the dawn
Long and low:
come home, come home

I don’t know where it begins or ends.
Small snips, short-lived,
Cut from the reel, spun through my head--
Some future, a world away, too tangled to unravel
the golden, living threads from the ashes of those long-dead.
(I don’t know where they begin or they end)

But this is the plane, and this is the place;
This is the axis of time & space
Where the birds sing you home on a path so old,
you can’t help but remember the way.
Reach down to the ground, wrap your fingers ‘round
the tangles of this golden thread,
pull it from the ashes of those long-dead.
The dust, once settled, will find its way
into the skies, then kiss my eyes.
(but it burns, it screams like a blow to the head)

You, a sweet surprise— the ash in my eyes—
Sharpening the edges into clear, cutting lines
That run ragged and ravenous through my head,
drag me through the ashes of the long-dead and I
Promise not to scream when they snip this thread--
(Oh, I would really love if you’d pull this thread)


Yes, I’ve foreseen this moment for so long:
You linger,
I blink;

and then you are gone.

Round three o’clock,
I’ll roll over— wide-eyed and violent,
Tummy to the bed;
Leaning on my elbows, thoughts racin’ through my head
Like I never slept at all.

I’ll look around, searching for something
In the empty night; in the empty bed,
Anything that’ll keep me free from my head, but
I won’t find it— just my half-eaten dreams. And me:

Hungry cannibal,
Watching in despair
As they shiver and dissolve, like whispers in the air—
But they’ll come around again; they know me well.

All too soon I’ll step out
From the empty bed
Where the monster sleeps, and I scramble at threads

That shiver and dissolve  in the empty night
Where morning hides. But that’s alright;
I’ve come to love them, the frost and the stars—

Perhaps like me, they’ve got lonely hearts.

I was once a queen in this dress.
Peasant and nobleman, child and commoner I had been, yes,
But never queen.
In this dress, autumn was my station, my birthright, my blood—
I was an heiress of field and stream,
Of tall grass, tree and sky,
Of August leaves bronzed under an Indian Summer sun.

Let me take you to that day; See as I see,
Look to the field all where the trees
Clap their hands, and shake from their branches golden leaves
To crown this small soul, their Majesty.
Standing steadfast as sentinels as they
Watch a life in reverse: I am shrinking, I am becoming
Nothing more than these blades of grass I run on,
This patch of sky I fall from,
This body, this blood, this tiny wisp of memory
In a mind so vast with humanity,
It has to spill over and splash into something like Time.
Silent, they watch as I unfold into this moment:
This moment newly-made,
ancient,
eternal,
To become queen, to become everything, to become

Nothing more than an end-of-summer’s day—