A small area of wooded shelter,
Hammocks in the sun, a warm fire with toasted sandwiches and beer,
It was where the rabbits chose to laze this evening.

The sky reflects in the muddy pools of our sticky footprints:  
The last mark of my being.
The air will diffuse into my body like a vaccine,
A warm bath,
Falling asleep.

Its quiet and her cuts have been cleaned.

Descend
Like a particle of dust
…
..
.
Landing on a *****,
A steep curve sharp as a knife.
A white car, backpacks, a guitar,
Sing life to the rims of the empty canyon
The sound returns  
It echoes like circadian drums.
A chasm, a fold in your bedsheets,
The space between you and your mother.
It divulges words of a great marble book,
Dialogue in dissonance
Pages upturned, eager to be read by the sun.
We run our hands along  
Stories carved in this valley of jaggedness,
Seeking horizon lines  
Under oceans of stone.
Mist falls
Through the sleeping cusp
between two gray shale wings
of the deepest river canyon,
Weaving strings of glacial waters
Like topographic canticles.

An internal breathlessness
Guides us by maps written
In shards of glass.
Rhythms of instinct
Pull me forward
Yet the blade on her hand
Collapses me in
profound solitude.
.

The desert during a heat wave,
Quiet browns and reds,
Sandy rock for miles and miles and miles.
We sit in havens of shade beneath hanging rocks,
Socks prickled with cactus needles.
This windswept planet foreign from rainy eastern green.

Waiting until the hostile angle of the sun lowers to the crux of the mountains,
Shadows extend as jackrabbits skirt around us.  
Les fougères poussent bien à l’ombre.

We climb on top of the tallest hill,
Backs on hard uneven sandstone,
Covered in petroglyphs, we look up.
The stars begin slowly, then all at once.
Salt spilling on black paper, the arch of Orion’s arm
Whirls near Sagittarius and Perseus.
26,000 Light years from her,
Swirling in the dark.
The wind said,
This is now the place for you:
Our galaxy, a heaven.
The stars, a liturgy.
My desert, a temple.

Walking trails my ancestor mapped,
Moss covers our sandals in the  
High sequoia forest.

On the crest of a ravine into a lake,
Inside a cloud,
A black dog follows our path.
Quiet gazes of deer meet us beyond rushing creek beds.
We’ve been awake since sunrise.  

I run off trail, alone.
Hiking up and up until there is  
No one.  
I take of my clothes and bathe in the cool water, the sun, the trees, the mountain, the air.

Waiting for no one who is coming, have I ever been more than anything but mortal?

I wish someone would have protected you,
I wish anyone would have protected you.

The sunlight warms my skin.
We will never be close again.
And I’d rather be here, alone, alone, alone, than hurt you.

Small movements lift white sheer curtains,
As I sit at kitchen tables in silence,

Rain touches the window like a morning kiss,
Pulling me from a dream, or a seance by a string.
The breeze navigates the house like a breath or a flood:
Silk falling from silk,  
Words falling from bridges,
This air is a pleasant dream.

Choose what is real or not,
Resurrect lingering memories like  
Transparent negatives overlaid in your hands:
There is a light and dark,
But an inverse of each.
Sewn together in a warm mess,
Liquid and melting light in time
Habitually, it drips from your fingers
Like rituals of burying artifacts
Far beneath the sun.








Before the leaves fell and the frost protected thoughts in a numb glaze,
I fell into the steam of chamomile tea,  
Pervasive yellow sweetened air
Swimming through medicated words like a needle before surgery,
A silence that amputates and eradicates
Hauntings of resurrection.

Two candles on a mirror.
Lighter clicks, sparks, reflects.
Dual realities.
Two sisters, burning from
Separated souls.


A gold coin widens slowly with heat,  
the room bathes in energy, clear and warm.  


Heartbeats flicker over white canvas sonograms.  
Evening light spills from the horizon,
An overturned glass of iridescent breath.  
Clouds hover like a ghost, a new melody of space.  

I blow candles out.  
Their love remains.





Under the mirror, the memory of light unfolds, a mitosis of energy.  I regard the extinguished flame, tranquil smoke running through the room like a prayer.  Under the wooden table, a carving with the initials of his name.


The love wanders to your open hands.  They move and smear with oil paint, mixing the sage green tablecloth, kinetic orange heats a canvas.


Nothing is the same
Relaxing, water replaces air
Everything is different now.
Nothing is the same.

Sunlight still leaks from the window like  
Dripping faucets against a clogged drain.  Her hair was turning blonde again, like when they were younger.
Humming, she was
Remembering his hands



















An emotional limbo where forgiveness waits
Intermediate neglect in oblivion
Lapsing into another’s life,
What’s inside you is not like anyone else
Every instant, a new reflection

More than sinking, less than swimming

Float on,  float on,  float on,  float away

I wonder what opaque transition of sight
Will allow us to exist?  
Upside down, lights up, sheets drawn,


Where you and I can meet halfway.


Lyrics of inorganic hymns emerge
Rationing daylight, resurrecting Eden in his eye -  
Sisterhood is a ghost of the seasons.

Written on your palms in
Smoldering greens to golds,
Bronze ferns purify  
Fragile angelic steps
As we step into the water.

Silver cotton grass frames the trail we walk.  
Sunlight adhering to skin,  
Condensing memories.





I do not want to remember us this way—

Toxicity hissing from floodlit walls

Filtering body and soul into—

how or when we love each other.




Masculine figures melt into the painting.  Silence resonates as they die.  

Dew collects on the leaves.  They slide down to the earth and surround the bodies.

A gold cut glows from under the doorway,
It saturates illuminated stitches.

The room was clean.  And she was painting.
I’ll always remember her.

I wrote your words on porcelain leaves
Petrified in lucid air
Shimmering like wounds
In true light, I paint  
Illusory rendered responses

Who’s to say the scene is not real – she speaks, breathes, walks in light?  My hands?  Her soul between the leaves?  
Belief in what?  
A reflective gospel.

Palette altars scatter the earth.  
Habituative, neurotic wildflowers  
Crawl from mirrored pools inverted in innocence,
Inviolate rhythms, hymns of absence.

Les fleurs suivent avec tous les pas que tu prends
et tout ce qu'ils fleurissent
Elle m’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, a la folie, pas de tout /

The leaves are falling, they shatter form syllables of your voice.
















It is in itself,

[As I look at her ghost]

Love, I am already in the ground.