Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”

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

I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.

In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote

Part of being a good sad person
is always painting the shadows
in the right direction and knowing
what sorrow to art with.

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

the man is stayed bent over the canvas
of my sofa. the man is me the man is him
self and I bring down the whip…

He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.

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

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