You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

The sin is existing.

I have an axe
with hearts gashed

we drove on through
the blue seal of morning as the turbines
turned and winked out their hearts

My grandmother asked, “Does it feel like being widowed?”

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.

my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

my father holds
his favorite drink