Up a little coiled
street, hardly touching
yards of palms and
cacti-
a street asleep the way
a ribbon lies,
untouched and full of
Christmas
  promise

up the corkscrew street, your hand in mine

and all the sleepy
little
foggy town
is a midnight shade of
red

The Copper Queen Mine
may be haunted
but I'm too in love
to see an ending or
   the dead.

We drove up the
  switchbacks-
one lane,
  gravel,
   up the mountain
side

and on the edge of the
cliff
where the ground meets the
sky, an infinity
pool as
bare and as dry as
  depression

it's ugly
and it's not clean
  at all

and it's a drop-off to the bottom that I'm
afraid to
hit

-but only for fear of falling,
    not for fear of
        not existing.

I'm not sure if I told
you,
but
when the orchestra becomes
quiet

like the moment
after
fallen
  sn
     o
        w

your stillness
whispers all the things
I need
  to know

I put up the
   tree and my
  little hands
ached-
I'm not old,
I'm hardly twenty-
six

I've worked so
hard
my hands still
can't handle
loneliness
  and sticks.