do you remember, sweetheart,
    the night I broke in
and painted the wall outside rose-colored?
through the tiny window,
    you stared at my handiwork
with shining eyes.
though there was a wall between us
    I felt you shudder into becoming,
handcuffs trembling on your wrists.
trembling, trembling,
    then dropping with a clang
as you exploded into stardust.
in the shimmering emptiness of your cell
my seashell ears
echoed anxious music
but I breathed you into
    weightless lungs
and felt the longing of mother sky

I dreamt recently
that a girl fell from the top of
a skyscraper so tall
by the time she collided with
the concrete below,
they had already told her
she would not make it.
I wonder if they had spoken
with soft, mellow voices,
or if they had given it to her
matter-of-fact. I wonder
what the firing synapses of
her brain looked like the fraction of
a millisecond before impact.
I wonder if she had time to
go  through all the stages of grief.
And maybe that’s why I
could take a jackhammer
to the despicable skyline,
the ugly glass prison in
that new, hip neighborhood
They™ are calling “Van Mission.”
Everything reminds me
we have terra cotta bodies.
Everything reminds me
my bones are not bird bones.
In some years, if I die falling off a higher-rise,
know that I fired through denial,
then just anger, anger, anger,
all the way down.

I have neglected you, dear one,
once so full and vivid, now
expatriate in the cheerless corner.
Look at you drooping, clinging
to the bloodless parts of you,
having long dwindled in
the thankless dark.
Here I come with a sharp pang,
lovely amputee.
How much happier you will be
to forget the bereft bits,
no longer of use in your unfolding.
Until memory pales,
will your phantom limbs
also rustle in the window’s breeze?