i thought, 'everything the water swallows

comes back beautiful.'

so i dreamed of the sea.

nothing is euphoric except this,

my mouth still tastes like the kind of sleep

i can never shake off.

i keep trying to make the pebbles skip,

but they're sinking.

only one thing is sure and that is death, which is an ending, and death is all-consuming, so everything must end.

your breath must end before you take another, and this minuscule death is discreet and it is a death you have accepted.

ending is certain but not always obvious, and one day, some day, you wake and with you in your bed is an ending. and you know the world is not kind but the world sounds good and tastes good and you are in it.

(rashes on thighs, batted lashes come as warning signs.)

i am exhausted by the Physical,

too small a being for the Metaphysical.

i will give you this life,

however many blinks it is.

i know of rotten flesh and

how it smells and

other lives I just can't offer.

"i wish you could talk,"

i'd kiss it on its head and i'd whisper.

it was the size of my hand. 

it amazes me

how much just softness

and sewn-on eyes 

can mean to a child,

and how much they can tell you about this world and that one if you just listen.

I SIGH. tender and precious and painful.

"What's not real?"

"Everything I wish would be."

I like your cobwebs and commas and textbook vocabulary, and how you think you're ABOVE me

In some sort of emotional depth hierarchy.

I gasp, I grasp the universe, I say:

I care 

What goes on in your head. I wonder. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder

If a songbird lives in there. 

Come inside, lie down with me. 

Rest your weary legs, so if we

Are meant to slip away in a dream,

It's on these sheets and not elsewhere.

Now, turn away. If you've grown out your hair,

I'll braid in a secret in there somewhere.

All my regrets I will ravel in.

If not, with my finger, the blunt javelin

I'll carve the words on top of your skin.

I'll let you speak till your mouth feels sore.

I'll lock your words in a hid-away drawer,

I'll throw the key to a place far flung.

I'll keep your taste on the back of my tongue.

I'll never ask when it turned so sour. 

Instead, in my head I will build you a tower

Where we will live and once in an hour,

I will water your tiniest flower;

Your thoughts in precocious bloom.

Dust my shoulders with your broken broom.

Color me golden so I have no room

On my body for anything silver.

(When I sigh I can sense that you quiver.

When you whisper, I shiver like winter.) 

Lie down with me.

la lumière.

the glare of the sun

leaves me broken in photosynthesis.

a morning so full of sicknesses

it sees me scratching at my face

with my fingertips-

-as twisted as

the knife in your chest.

i sing a rhapsody

for

the wind on a branch of the cherry tree;

it will blow and soon on the count of three-

-deliberately

scatter the wor d s t h a t y o u w h i s p e r

quietly to yourself when you kiss her.

l'obscurité.