Her beauty exists in a vacuum 

pouring sunlight into nothing.

Eyes as black as night,

shouting echoes of the same ache.

**

She saw him stand, cap backwards and bent;

He saw her small – unknown figure and forgotten face;

Their fate, once stages 

unfolding under the same pain. 

**

He had a baby, she now knows.

A pretty little thing where his light goes.

She has the fantasy of a sentence

given like a dose.

Elle a dit qu’elle était morte à six, huit, quinze, vingt-six, avant vingt-neuf.

À chaque fois, elle revenait renaissante, d’un œuf en plastique et en faux or.

Un oiseau mécanique incapable de voler.

Mais la cage était réelle, et sa porte s’ouvrait lorsque vous étiez à l’intérieur et se fermait pour toujours si jamais vous sortiez.

Si elle se sentait vivante, elle ne le montrait pas lorsqu’elle était seule.

Les oiseaux mécaniques ne chantent que lorsqu’on les sollicite.

A marble box with a circle top.

I have a terrible secret to keep.

Smoke steeps

like infused tea

in an hollowed space.

Try Cover,

You were never 

meant to

stop.

Was it you 

or was it me?

That last goodbye. 

**

We walked the numbers to 18 –

to the 12th – a final sea of blue gowns.

Before, though, we practiced in the 8th.

Ceremonial honors of a closed chapter.

**

We wrote that year in laughter,

Asked for the cutest delivery drivers

70 year old, “you should see the others”

ghost encounters, told neath cold covers.

**

Still they never felt like endings,

those haunting glimpses.

Our books and movies frozen

now in that inner eye of mine.

I see us seeing things I can no longer see, only imagine like the Ferris wheel destroyed

whose top I’ll never know. 

**

We moved to the final four, but half of that is all I own. 

A brief detour to another world,

where I learned I’d walk alone.

When I returned, I was cursed;

I’d been a coward

built by lies,

ones you would never find.

**

I knew while you still smiled

during group projects, tennis practice and homecoming.

The shift in motion, tiny little steps,

like the ants that colonized your abandoned ice cream bar on our senior day at the park. 

The Earth was a marble in her mouth

A globe, slimy, knocking against teeth.

Dents created, whether glass or enamel,

cut. 

**

Saliva and blood paint over blue faded beneath clouds

and green dead under winter white.

**

Her tongue engulfs old dirt,

eating, eating all hurt

but she chokes on words 

trapped in a minuscule world.

**

If she smiles, the globe sees light

but kept tight-lipped, and darkness leaps. 

What can I say of blades of grass 

that hasn’t been borne from superior minds? 

Grass is the teeth of the earth,

spines of cacti.

**

I tear myself for beauty

like a cactus spine is picked 

to tear the meat inside.

We slept on metal clouds 

that shook when boots grouped

along the narrow path,

blocking off the lights,

never from the top.

**

You wet your cloud and it rained 

on mine. A little swap not allowed 

in that tough crowd.

**

tears, our

last remaining memory of warmth,

shroud as well as urine

for prison-barred children. 

I painted a mural with my tongue 

and cried as every stroke 

left me insecure. 

Not of beauty, that’s for sure.

***

A rough ruined stage, my little face

hidden under silken drapes.

I loved it once,

***

do you?

***

The site bears the weight

of hissing colors

unchanged by new eyes,

I crossed two fingers and closed mine.

But wet paint tore

the sky

and streaks of me 

became the sacrifice.

Blood-mixed paint 

in crevices.

***

A slight gasp –

did I create a god

and left him

to scrub paint stains?

A dragonfly asked me to play

one day when I was

eight. I thought to win

the chase, would be akin

to burning at the stake.

I was unnatural 

in that nature

and could never stay. 

To be free was not my goal,

My wants held 

in a chalice, I could never drink,

only offer. 

Eyes flickered back 

to the shore that held 

that otherworld

as I quelled the internal rot

feeding flies.

The game – abandoned 

I,

forced to endure

the chatter of a bus

headed toward reality. 

…

The childhood spell I had known 

became wrapped in iridescent wings

I could almost see 

but never be.

I was instead a witch 

who worshipped willows

and turned beauty bitter.

My coven burned before it formed

and a wooden broom –

my wings. 

…

I saw a dragonfly at the park

It danced above a shallow pond 

glistening like a prism.

Time became the ripples 

at the water’s edge 

and I then stood,

like years before,

with the present

woven through a game

two dragonflies wished to play.

Cotton candy wrapped silence

sliced into pieces,

hung by the window,

blocking the sun.

A supernova explodes

into a black hole.

(Endings taste like sugar)